Today we have a guest blog from Elizabeth Andreini:
In
Q4 we were all thinking about setting budgets and planning for the coming year.
Now that we are in the first quarter of the year, are you making sure that the
money you are spending on marketing is as effective as possible? Understanding
how your marketing efforts are performing can be difficult but will help you
better assess what’s working…and what’s not. Make this the year you make
smarter marketing decisions!
If
you haven’t put them in place, now’s the time to utilize scorecards, dashboards
and other measurement tools to ensure that you are spending money most
effectively – and making the biggest impact on your bottom line. Here is a
quick briefing on scorecards and dashboards with five hints on using these
tools:
•
Scorecards: help you understand performance relative to plan,
and enable you to align operational execution with business strategy
•
Dashboards: tie to operational goals and leverage reports containing
Key Performance Indicator data to help you gain insight into Key Performance
Drivers so you can “pull the right levers”
5 important factors
to consider when using scorecards and dashboards:
- Have a
clear purpose in what you are tracking and what you are going to do with
it.
- Be SMART (specific,
measureable, achievable, realistic and time bound) in your data
requirements.
- Use “good” data. That means data that is not averages, is reasonably accurate, complete AND easy to get. - Align the
use of the scorecards and dashboards with your company’s business
processes so the information can get used in decision making to drive
company behavior and decisions for optimal impact.
- Look beyond
outcome data showing history to gain insights on how your decisions and
processes can be modified to get a different result – identify your Key
Performance Drivers.
- Provide a
frame of reference using targets or benchmarks, whether internal and/or
industry specific as a point of comparison.
As
the CEO, the questions you should ask about your marketing efforts are:
- What are
the success measures of my marketing efforts? Do I know which marketing
efforts are the most effective?
- Do I have
the right information easily accessible in the company so marketing can use
it to track their marketing efforts and spend? How can I help ensure the
company and those in it are helping capture the information we need?
- Is my
marketing more or less effective than my competitors? Is it more or less
effective than others in my industry? Does my marketing department
regularly track their progress and make adjustments based on the results
so we are making better/smarter marketing decisions than last year?
Here’s
hoping 2013 is the year your marketing efforts have even more impact on your
company’s success!
ELIZABETH ANDREINI
As the President of Accelerate Marketing, LLC,
Elizabeth Andreini, is the “secret weapon” CEOs turn to at key growth points
when they need to transform marketing and product management to grow their
customer base, increase revenue & scale their business. In addition to
providing experienced executive insight and guidance, Elizabeth often works as
an interim CMO or VP to provide the hands-on leadership needed to rearchitect
marketing and product management and improve execution from the inside.
Elizabeth
Andreini, founder & president of Accelerate Marketing, LLC
Accelerate
Marketing, LLC
206-769-3420
or elizabeth@accelerate-marketing.com
Twitter:
@acceler8mkting
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethandreini
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