Using an Analytical Approach to Ride Out the Economy: Part Two

As promised in our last post, here are a few more analytical marketing ideas that will help all Marketers be successful — no matter what the economic climate.

Here’s the next idea: Get everybody involved. Lots of times, Marketing is accused of operating in a vacuum, not being in touch with sales or corporate objectives. Hence, budgets get cut and marketing resources have to begin to fight for their jobs.

In times like this, plan some meetings — some real meetings.  Schedule time to get an accurate view from your CEO, from IT, from Sales — get their ideas on how they measure marketing effectiveness. They can give you some great ideas as to what metrics they believe need to be put in place. Better yet, align your measurements so that you are all working towards the same or complimentary goals. One of the reasons that Marketing gets a bad rap is because the goals across divisions are not aligned correctly. Thus, one division’s objectives may be in absolute conflict with Marketings objectives. This is not going to result in happy campers in the different divisions.  What it might result in is missed objectives . . . resulting in cut budgets . . . resulting in fewer resources.  You get the idea.

So, go talk to your corporate Leaders. Get a good understanding of their specific corporate objectives and make sure that marketing’s goals and metrics align as exactly as possible with corporate goals.

Next meet with Sales — here is where the most conflict may come from . . . have you ever heard this? “These leads suck!” Yep, in marketing we all have heard this.  And, this is what Sales hears from Marketing: “Sales can’t close any of our leads to save their lives!” Not an environment conducive to success.  Perhaps its just that Marketing and Sales needs to sit down and discuss each other’s objectives. Then, they need to revise those objectives so that they are very closely aligned.  This way, Marketing can go acquire the data that will facilitate sales success in reaching their objectives.

In addition, Sales can provide Marketing with their bird’s eye view of the customer.  Then, Marketing can share with Sales what their customer profile studies have told them. Armed with more complete information, they can better target their customer base, create better messaging that will more likely resonate with their customers, and find the most responsive, targeted prospects for sales to call on.

Who ever thought it would all come down to being able to communicate?  And whoever thought communication would be called analysis?  Well, it isn’t — but an analytical approach can certainly help to facilitate better communication!

Stay tuned to the next post for our final word on this subject!