The Marketer of Yesteryear

Metrics – the bane of the marketing person: “What do you mean you want to know the CAC? I’m not sure what the ROI on this program will be.” Gone are the days when you just assume your programs will be approved because the decision-makers know, in some vague way, marketing adds to the value of the company or promotion. Gone are the days when the most important thing you speak to your CEO about is the color of the logo or the storyboards behind the commercials.

Marketing’s Accountability

Today, decision-makers expect hard numbers on how how you are expecting your program to perform or how it is performing. Marketers are expected to be able to project how many leads will be generated or gross adds acquired. Today, a business-case mentality and the metrics to support it are required to acquire sponsorship and funding for new, or existing, programs. This is the best way to ensure marketing remains accountable to the Business and in line with the business objectives. There are a variety of marketing metrics out there and which ones you choose to analyze will determine the size of your budget, the stability of your promotion and the influence the marketing team will have on the Business’s strategy.

So…what are the most important marketing metrics? Of course, there is always ROI/or ROMI – return on investment/ marketing return on investment. But what else is important? I recently ran across a cheat sheet by Mike Volpe, Hubspot’s CMO, which I think lasers in on the most critical metrics.

Summary

It’s just a matter of time before marketing departments have data dashboards just like EPMO, sales, finance or other metric-oriented departments, if they don’t already. And it will be only a few years before they’re producing real-time and predictive data which will allow for faster and more accurate decisions, with resulting performance improvement. Marketing is joining the adults, kids. The time for accountability has arrived.