Although there is something exhilarating about marketing or advertising that positions an idea in a way that you’ve never thought about it before or expresses it using a completely unique, innovative or creative method, let us not forget that there is a difference between fine art and marketing. Fine art exists for the sake of creativity. Marketing exists for the sake of achieving some organizational objective. I’d pay top dollar to see a CMO defend his/her budget (or job for that matter) playing the “but we did some really creative work” card.

As a follow up on our recent post about standardized marketing metrics, we explore the conversation as it progresses within the marketing community. Marketing NPV published an interesting article furthering the case for (and against) a standardized set of marketing metrics. In particular, they argue that CMOs should be spending more time asking a set of difficult, yet critical, questions about their marketing strategies and efforts then working to develop a standardized set of marketing metrics

It is only responsible for Fast Company to publish an article about a CMO’s balancing of creativity and analytics in its most recent issue featuring the top 100 creative people in business. We’ve seen too many cool and creative ideas and approaches to marketing flounder when it comes to what matters most to business—driving bottom line results.

A recent article found a stronger correlation between marketing capabilities and firm performance than those for both R&D and operations.

The problem is that there isn’t a standard set of marketing practices on which to base standardized metrics. Although nearly every organization may have a web site or a brochure, the usage of those tools is very disparate. marketing should be tied to the organization’s key performance indicators, including profitability for a profit-driven organization. Beyond that, the organization should break down its KPIs according to its sales cycle and measure marketing’s performance at every stage in that cycle.

Where organizations engaging in Tier I marketing are tactically driven, Tier II marketing is driven by strategic goals and insights. The strategy drives the tactics.

good marketing firm should help you answer 7 of these questions (1-6,9). Take a look at questions 1 through 6 and 9; would you like the answers to those questions? Do you think that knowing answers to those questions would make you more profitable?

companies performing in the 95th percentile in terms of pertinent growth metrics are those with better than normal market research abilities.

Forbes has our Back. Well… they don’t literally have our back, but we are preaching mostly the same thing. In a recent article by Larry Light, marketing is portrayed as one of the most important business functions that on many levels is not managed like a business function. Mr. Light proposes that marketing is run … Continue reading Forbes has our Back →