The True and Relevant Marketing Metrics

Access your KPIs online;
Measure your success;

Navigation: All Balanced Scorecard Articles > Strategic Planning

Marketing is without question a very important aspect in selling services and goods. However, the success of a strategy is difficult to obtain without the use of appropriate marketing metrics. Check additional information about marketing metrics.

Any CEO or company director who has a good grasp on the concept of marketing will agree that measuring with marketing metrics is important in the development of the organization. However, it is saddening to know that not all marketing employees, particularly those working in highly market-driven industries such as e-commerce, do not regularly learn, study, and obtain basic but crucial marketing indicators. Survey statistics even reveal that most organizations allocate only 10% of the total annual budget for measuring marketing performance.

Key performance metrics for measuring marketing are comparatively new in the configuration of a successful business organization. These marketing yardsticks are deliberately formulated to measure the distance between business approaches or product marketing strategy and the results or final execution of the marketing strategy.

In the identification of metrics for measuring marketing performance, marketing managers should look into the characteristics of quick responsiveness and spontaneousness, since marketing activities and campaigns do not take a halt during the measuring process. Among the most widely used metrics in marketing that display these essential characteristics are the conversation rate of a marketing campaign, sellable products according to size or volume of order, and revenue per consumer or customer.

Metrics for measuring marketing performance do not only center on the product specifications, advertising, and marketing conversion aspects. The indicators must also reflect the buying behavior of customers in order to come up with more customer targeted and market precise campaigns. Other likely metrics that marketing managers can use are promotional strategy, distribution tactics, advertising policies, profits, margins, customer perceptions, competitor's influence, market share, pricing strategy, sales channels, sales force, customer profitability, product portfolio, return on investment, overall sales, and sales per channel.

The real objective in finding, obtaining, and applying relevant marketing indicators is to produce an evaluation report on the success rate of each unit in the marketing aspect and ultimately reveal how these units contribute to the overall success of the business organization according to its corporate objectives.

Marketing, indisputably, is a cog in the wheel when it comes to selling products and services. There is a truism that says no selling can be done without marketing. And indeed, in today's competitive global market, it is critical to determine not only he success rate and efficiency of a specific marketing campaign but also to find out if the marketing strategy itself is working for the company's profitability.

Measuring marketing performance is not actually a marketer's job. Board directors are usually the more meticulous and speculative when it comes to finding out the significance of a marketing campaign to profitability. Marketing managers, however, will not have a hard time answering the director's queries if they will only use the appropriate metrics.

Marketing managers should use metrics that display how marketing expenditures are spent wisely. They should also tell whether the marketing resources are satisfying the long and short-term goals of the organization. Furthermore, the indicators should say how return on investments is measured and the specific returns that came from the company's marketing expenses.

Marketing metrics should answer most of the directors' questions. But perhaps, only the true and relevant metrics can satisfy the curiosity of the board regarding the performance of a marketing strategy. True and relevant metrics are those that reveal an decrease or increase of returns and the satisfaction of customers.

If you are interested in marketing metrics, check this link to find out more about marketing roi. Also, you can check other articles in Strategic Planning category.

Balanced Scorecard Toolkit includes step-by-step manuals, documents, presentations, check lists designed to help business professionals with successful development and implementation of Balanced Scorecard. Learn more about BSC Toolkit.