5 Key Marketing Questions - Management Questions

What exactly influences our consumers today? The digital revolution and the explosion of social media have profoundly changed what influences consumers as they undertake their purchasing decision journey.2 When considering products, they read online reviews and compare prices. Once in stores, they search for deals with mobile devices and drive hard bargains. And after the purchase, they become reviewers themselves and demand ongoing relationships with products and brands. Although companies have access to terabytes of data about these behavioral changes, many still can’t answer the fundamental question: how exactly are our customers influenced? The solution is usually to commission research that gets at the heart of understanding the consumer’s decision journey. Such foundational work must shine a light on the touch points and messages that actually influence consumer behavior. Marketers must be ready to use the findings to debunk accepted wisdom and legacy rules of thumb.
How well informed (really) is our marketing judgment? Marketing has always combined facts and judgment: after all, there’s no analytic approach that can single-handedly tell you when you have a great piece of creative work. Marketers often hear that the answer to improving their judgment in this rapidly changing environment is data, and some companies have sophisticated analytical tools. Yet it’s difficult to integrate all of this information in a way that not only provides answers that you trust but can also inform smart marketing changes. We counsel a return to what creates great marketing judgment: start by formulating hypotheses about the impact of changes to your marketing mix and then seek analytical evidence. We are excited by the possibilities that “big data” and advanced analytics create—no question. But data remain only as useful as the expertise you bring to bear, and good judgment will remain a hallmark of the best marketers.
How are we managing financial risk in our marketing plans? Successful communication requires hitting the right audience with the right message at the right time: a small, moving target. With traditional media, marketers have mitigated the risk of failure through years of trial and error about what makes great advertising. That’s not the case with today’s new media. Influence can shift rapidly, and there is little accumulated experience about which messages work, when marketers should apply them, how they can be scaled, or even whom they influence. Looking to external agencies is little help; they’re in the same boat. At a basic level, the degree of ROI risk—getting the sales results you want from a given amount of marketing spending—has increased. Yet while spending on new media is a risky bet, it’s a bet companies feel compelled to make. So the question becomes how much risk is too much—or, for that matter, too little. A simple allocation model ensured a gradual move to emerging media, mitigating risk while providing breathing room for piloting, testing, and learning. Using decision tools can do more than provide marketers with valuable information. They can stimulate dialogue about real trade-offs and help to manage expectations across business units and functions whose cooperation is often critical when companies change the broader commercial mix. Managing risk is critical, and marketers shouldn’t be shy about putting this issue squarely on the table. With thoughtful scenario planning and cross-functional participation, such discussions can be extremely rich and rewarding.
How are we coping with added complexity in the marketing organization? As the external marketing environment becomes more complex, so must the internal environment. Marketers historically had only a handful of communication vehicles; now they have dozens of them, and the number is growing rapidly. This proliferation has led to the emergence of both external and internal specialists, with accumulated experience not only in media channels (such as social media) but even in individual vehicles (such as Facebook). The exponential growth in marketing complexity seems unending and needs to be managed. We’ve found three things that are always true in managing complexity within the marketing organization. First, you’ll require a number of specialists. You just will. You can’t get the skills and knowledge you need in just one person, and you’re not likely to get everything you need internally. Second, you’ll need somebody who both integrates marketing efforts across channels and communications vehicles and focuses on the bottom line. In packaged-goods companies, this was—and may still be—the role of brand managers, but the basic requirement is that it must be done by someone. Finally, you’ll need absolute clarity in processes, roles, and responsibilities not only within the marketing organization but also throughout your company (across functions and business units) and externally (with agencies and external vendors).
What metrics should we track given our (imperfect) options? In an ideal world, the financial returns and the ability of all forms of communication to influence consumers would be precisely calculated, and deciding the marketing mix would be simple. In reality, there are multiple, and usually imperfect, ways to measure most established forms of marketing. Nothing approaches a definitive metric for social media and other emerging communication channels, and no single metric can evaluate the effectiveness of all spending. Yet you must have a way to track progress and hold marketers accountable. That’s nonnegotiable. How do you do it? Even in the absence of a single way of measuring ROI for different channels, marketers should move toward an apples-to-apples way of comparing returns across a range of media. Metrics are rarely perfect. Yet the volume of data available today should make it possible to find metrics and analytic opportunities that take advantage of your unique insights, are understood and trusted by your top team, provide proof of progress, and lay a foundation for more sophisticated approaches to tracking marketing ROI in the future.