'You can't manage what you don't measure' - but Marketing will try anyway..

I recently came across the findings of a survey conducted by Patricia Seybold Group and the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) into data-driven marketing. It may not come as a surprise to find that many Marketing department's fail to subscribe to the mantra attributed to Deming: if you don't measure it, you can't manage it. Marketing is famously associated with assertions that suggest the opposite of measurement, such as that of Lord Lever that 'half of my advertising budget is wasted; I just don't know which half'. This needs to change.

Marketing Leadership Needed to Drive Change 
But, despite the much greater availability of reliable data, due to marketing activity being increasingly conducted in the digital world, it seems that data-driven decision-making is not widespread. There is maybe a clue as to why this is the case in the findings quoted on the Patricia Seybold Group website:

'The survey further shed light on the factors that enable a company to become data savvy. First among these is leadership, with clear objectives and success measures. Data governance and technology plans and investments closely follow leadership. We also found that clearly documented, formal procedures and a dedicated analytics group are critical to success.'


Process, technology, governance and dedicated analytics are not concepts naturally associated with Marketing. To change expectations about how Marketing contributes to business performance and the revenue cycle,  Marketing requires leadership and vision from the CMO, as mentioned above. Unfortunately, what I see too often is companies embracing technology solutions as 'the answer' without asking any of the right questions.


Data Needed to Support Marketing-driven Pipeline


Marketo say in their Blog interview with Patricia Seybold:


' the combination of changes in buyer behavior and the technology capabilities available today make much more actionable data available to marketers. For instance, customers don’t call in salespeople until much later, so marketers use data to read buying behavior signals on the web in order to present the right offer at the right time as they move prospects through the buying cycle, much like a salesperson used to do in face-to-face engagement. Similarly, now that marketers are responsible for nurturing prospects through a larger slice of the buying cycle, they need to apply the same rigor to their pipeline reporting that sales has historically provided.'


But, in reality, how much of this is really happening outside the largest companies worldwide (led by the US)? I have often struggled to convince senior management to implement the changes required across the sales and marketing process to drive the data that fuels the key metrics needed to link Marketing programs with revenue. This seems to be reinforced by the study findings (see below) from Patricia Seybold Group, with whom I'll leave the last word. There is a long way to go before most marketing departments will have a Marketing Operations team; and measurable outcomes, supported by analytics, will be the norm.


'Most disturbing, only a handful of non-marketing senior executives rely on marketing data to make decisions, as shown in Illustration 2. As you might expect, business-unit and sales executives used marketing data the most to make decisions. Mostly, though, marketing data reports are reviewed with no action taken (my italics).'