Note: This post is a timely refresh of a blog we wrote in 2016, The Pros and Cons of Different Revenue Attribution Models.
To truly understand marketing ROI, we must first understand marketing influence. It's important to understand not only how much revenue the marketing organization has influenced but also the degree of influence. Ultimately, organizations want to know how much revenue they can attribute to their marketing efforts. This is not as easy as it sounds.
Topics: Marketing Analytics, Revenue Attribution, Buyer's journey, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, Marketing Performance
The Falling Tenure of the CMO: How to Help Turn the Numbers Around
Over the past few years, research has been showing a decline in the average tenure of a U.S. chief marketing officer.
In fact, at 3.5 years—cites a new report from consulting firm Korn Ferry—the CMO’s tenure actually ranks as the shortest of all titles in the C-suite (CEO, CFO, CHRO, CMO and CIO/CTO). In comparison, the average for the CMO was 4.1 years in 2016.
The report, which analyzes the top 1,000 U.S. companies (by revenue), notes in particular that CMOs in the technology industry are ranking the lowest on average, with a 3.0-year tenure. At the top were CMOs in the industrial sector, coming in at 4.0 years.
Caren Fleit, leader in Korn Ferry’s global marketing officers practice, suggests the overall tenure problem could be tied to an organization’s deficiency in proving the true value of the CMO—i.e., “a lack of understanding of how powerful this role can really be in terms of driving business outcomes.”
Read MoreTopics: Dashboards, Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Revenue Attribution, Hive9, marketing measurement, Marketing Performance
C.S. Lewis authored the often quoted saying that “two heads are better than one.” Why? “[N]ot because either is infallible,” the British writer said, “but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.” Of course, Lewis wasn’t referring to marketing strategy, but the quotation proves an apt concept in this space, particularly when it comes to effective budgeting.
Read MoreTopics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Budgeting, Revenue Attribution, Marketing Budgeting, marketing data, agile marketing
One of the best quotes about planning ahead comes from that iconic Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” This is particularly apt in the world digital marketing, where a lack of specific strategies to achieving clear goals will sink any business, big or small. For that reason, we’ve listed five features every marketer needs to look for when selecting an effective marketing-planning software solution.
Read MoreTopics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Financial Planning, Revenue Attribution, Marketing Budgeting, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, alignment
Shine a light on your marketing planning to deliver better performance
Planning can be a dirty word in any aspect of business, especially marketing. Planning is difficult. It takes time and resources to be done right. It takes skills, tools and a solid process to execute. And it takes data, data that must be cleaned and aggregated into consumable insights for it to be usable for the planners.
Read MoreTopics: Marketing Planning, Financial Planning, Budgeting, Revenue Attribution, Marketing Budgeting, Hive9, Effective Planning, Marketing Insights, ABM, marketing data, Marketing Performance
It is time to trade up from personal productivity to organizational productivity.
The spreadsheet can be a very powerful tool, especially for personal productivity, problem solving and modeling scenarios. It is where most organizations first develop their marketing plan. Four or five marketers sharing the same room determine that it is time to write down the plan, share it with others, use it to meet with finance, assign ownership to tasks, and generally feel good that the plan is in one place.
Read MoreTopics: Marketing Planning, Revenue Attribution, Integrated Marketing, Campaigns, ABM, Marketing Performance
Marketing ROI is notoriously hard to prove. Even with all the inroads we’ve made in collecting marketing analytics, proving ROI still ranks as the top challenge marketers from businesses of all sizes cite.
Read MoreTopics: Revenue Attribution, Hive9