Tag: digital transformation

Marketing spend: to cut or optimize?

Over the last decade marketing effectiveness has been slowly declining and the industry has gone through a lot of changes. In attempt to save budgets many companies decided to reduce this expenditure area, but how wise was this move, given that marketing drives growth and enterprise value? This article covers an approach everyone should take when it comes to allocating budget. Marketers all over the world are under pressure to justify their huge spend, which amounts to 10% of revenue on average. In 2017 Binet & Field published a book called Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era, where they wrote that marketing effectiveness is currently declining. There are a few possible reasons behind such a trend: media fragmentation / complexity; too many metrics: address this issue by identifying key metrics for your organization; marketing effectiveness culture is still developing; lack of collaboration within a company: marketing and finance alone have four obstacles complicating their cooperation; narrow focus on some attribution models; focus on short-term results: the pie chart below demonstrates when campaign performance is measured. More than half of all respondents focused on immediate outputs, while only a third took into account longer time periods. But ads’ potential to drive… Read more »

12 competencies marketers develop to achieve best-in-class marketing accountability

Today, around 10% of revenue is allocated to marketing, and in 2018 these spends amounted approximately to a trillion dollars worldwide. All marketers are under pressure to justify such huge investments, but top professionals know how to cope with it. In this article you will find out how to become a high-performing marketer as well as increase accountability and transparency in your company. Despite all technological advancements in the industry, accurate quantification of marketing contribution remains a serious challenge, mainly because there are no universal standards in this area. Forbes addressed the problem by establishing an initiative together with the Marketing Accountability Standards Board aimed at helping businesses better measure, optimize and understand the contribution of marketing. They also conducted a research involving 800 CMOs to select the most effective tools, strategies and approaches available now. Every detail matters, all promotion channels, traditional and digital must be used in the most effective and efficient way, every investment should be a well-informed decision. Today data is power, so it doesn’t come as a surprise when experts mention it among analytics and martech that improve marketing performance. Here are nine key takeouts from the research, by doing which a company can get… Read more »

How marketing increases enterprise value?

There is no doubt marketing contributes a lot to company’s growth, but how to accurately define its contribution is still to be determined. In this article we cover most common challenges marketers face today and provide some valuable advice from a 2018 research by Forbes on how to apply marketing techniques wisely and quickly implement data-driven insights in your decision-making to increase the enterprise value. According to the research where over 800 marketing executives were involved, investments in marketing have become the major contributor to company value in today's digitally driven economy. Market conditions are changing quickly, intangible assets like brand equity, innovations and customer relationships are becoming increasingly important. To monitor complex, fast changing customer journey and address numerous other problems marketers worldwide annually spend about $1 trillion, moreover they are struggling to justify these huge expenses as well as measure their effectiveness. Most CMOs use over twenty tools; with this variety it’s getting more difficult to measure and optimize marketing investments. The need for higher marketing accountability shows that an international measurement standards should be established. Here are three reasons why organizations need to better understand, measure and improve marketing? Investors and owners need to see the impact… Read more »

What prevents marketing and finance leaders from effective collaboration?

Digital transformation is under way and it’s changing the industry. One of the necessary conditions for successful transition is closer cooperation between marketing and finance leaders. In this article you’ll learn what causes most disagreement and where they should find more common ground.  In June 2019, Ernst & Young published a report about potential that cooperation between CMOs and SFOs has. In the age of digital transformation MarTech helps businesses better understand their clients, track activity along the customer journey, stimulate growth, and analyze data to provide insights for marketers. Marketers use everything that new technology and data offer to invest smarter and increase customer loyalty and retention and adopt a customer-focused approach to marketing. And to successfully implement this data-driven approach they need significant investments, which should be approved by CFOs, who want to hear a strong business case and ROI forecast before making any decisions. That’s why collaboration and better dialogue between the two functions is crucial in the age of digital transformation. According to Ernst & Young survey of 304 C-level managers in finance and marketing, 90% think that these departments need to be more involved into one another’s activities, and 83% believe that this cooperation will… Read more »

The right way to set up an in-house agency

After the transparency scandal broke out in the marketing industry, advertisers tried to solve this issue by in-housing some operations. Even though it initially results in ROI increase, it doesn’t mean this strategy is perfect. There are some factors that encourage companies to bring marketing functions in-house, but there are also some risks to consider. A large media agency Carat published a guide in April 2019 on how to efficiently in-house marketing operations and achieve the best results. Digital transformation requires changes, and relations between advertisers and agencies is one of the first things that should be reviewed to achieve more cooperation, a better dialogue and higher transparency. The problem with in-housing is that it loses its value over time and doesn’t result un as high ROI as initially. Sure it is inspiring to learn that one of the world’s largest advertisers Procter&Gamble set up its own in-house agency and managed to save $750 million in 2017, but such a transition should be performed very carefully with all the advantages and disadvantages taken into consideration. To achieve long-term positive results with in-housing you need to: align your company’s data strategy to its in-housing objective and  single out data maturity as… Read more »