What is marketing effectiveness?
I’ll be blogging The Conference Board’s “Marketing Effectiveness Conference” next Tuesday and Wednesday in New York. There’s a great line up of speakers from companies like Citibank, Eli Lilly, Pepsi, Disney and Met Life. The conference leader is Don Sexton, professor of business and director of the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia University.
Some of the things I’m interested in learning:
- How are leading organizations assessing the effectiveness of social media and digital strategies? Advertising Age’s Jack Neff wrote a great piece last month, “Why Mix Models Don’t Mesh with Digital,” about how many companies aren’t investing in these new areas because the budgets aren’t big enough to be factored into the marketing mix models. So because innovative approaches can’t be measured with the old tools, that’s reason not to invest? Yikes!
- How are companies taking a holistic view of what is influencing customer decisions? It seems that most companies measure silos — search, broadcast, direct, online advertising, PR, promotions. These discrete views often cloud real issues and opportunities.
- Are there different approaches for measuring B2B vs B2C? Could a B2b software company, for example, use the same strategy as Pepsi?
- If a company could only do one thing when it comes to assessing effectiveness, what should that be?
If anyone has other questions, please post them here and I’ll be sure to raise them at the conference and post the replies next week.
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April 10th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Lois
as far as #3 goes - I would say - no way could I possibly use the Pepsi media plan for BearingPoint (B2B management and technology company)
the reason is not necessarily b2b vs b2c - its more about - What is the corporate strategy and since they are so different and we cater to so many diverse audiences that it would impossible for us to use their media plan
BUT - if they wanted to give me their media budget - I would be happy to swap it for mine
April 11th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Love the open, creative curiosity of the questions, Lois.
Makes seeing the unseen - like using old tools to measure something they were never intended to measure, and having the tools ineffectiveness go unnoticed while opportunity and innovation goes hungry of attention and resource - suddenly exciting, even fascinating, and a whole lot less threatening.
Especially for us creative types (and ain’t the field full of us?)
Goes back to your point a couple of posts ago about challenging ideas (and fears) about how things go: sometimes there isn’t nearly as much to be afraid of when you just start playing around with ideas when things aren’t working as well as they used to. But boy, can that spin your head around a bit!
And your last question about assessing effectiveness - excellent.
For whatever its worth, I immediately started reverse engineering in my head, reviewing process and streams of activity to see where things start breaking down to see what’s stopped working and why.
Also started to wonder what relationships - this relates to this, which hinges on that, which makes this over here hum (or not) - might be going amiss because of old tools (now ineffective) or assumptions (no longer valid).
Then looking to the natural and associated disfunction in communication (not enough information, not the right kind of information, approach a little off, etc) between those relationships might help determine new ways to measure, and clear paths for improvement.
Also can’t help but wonder if looking at the alignment of values between B & B or even more importantly, B & C as the doorway through which effective transaction takes place today should be part of any new measurement of effectiveness…?
Again, for whatever its worth. Have fun in NYC!