Grace W. Ueng is CEO of Savvy Marketing Group in Cary, which works with several local companies. A consultant, speaker and writer, Ueng has served on the adjunct faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School and in the international MBA program at Fudan in Shanghai, a joint venture with MIT Sloan School, teaching "Entrepreneurial Marketing and Innovation." For several weeks in Work&Money, Ueng is offering her 12-step guide to marketing new and existing businesses. To catch up, go to www.newsobserver.com/business.
Step 11: Increase correlation between marketing and sales.
Step 12: Set metrics upfront - quantitative measurements for all marketing activities to guide progress and performance against business goals.
Indeed, why does marketing exist? To drive sales and find customers for businesses. I have always believed there needs to be a tight correlation between investment in marketing and resulting sales. Marketing is more of a science than an art. When planned and executed the right way, marketing is an investment, not an expense.
Just as Six Sigma is to manufacturing, science should and must be applied to marketing. When was the last time you gave your marketing plan a performance review or invested in an external audit? Marketing is core to every business. Marketing is not just the "fluffy stuff." Marketing solves people's problems with products and services at a profit. Give it the attention it deserves.
I was attracted to join General Mills straight out of business school - the brand management program promised us experience in general management with P&L responsibility. They lived up to that promise. When I worked in brand management at Clorox, our leader ingrained in us that every action we took needed to affect volume and profit; otherwise we shouldn't be investing our energies. For instance, when I was assigned to the Clorox liquid bleach brand, we painstakingly analyzed every proposed trade promotion based on historical trends to make sure each would pay out at an acceptable level before approving the spending. Nearly two dec ades later, our clients today expect and deserve exactly the same from their investment in marketing.
Do you want to earn the confidence of your CEO or CFO? Don't complain if you don't get your budget approved if you can't deliver the plan for measuring return on investment on your marketing investment. By setting metrics upfront, you can decide what programs to continue, stop or tweak. Be sure to know how you will define success, in both the short term and the long term. Sales cycles in business to business segments can often be months to over a year in length, so the true return takes time to monitor. In consumer categories, the products could be fast-moving consumables where ROI can be measured sooner. Regardless, the sales organization holds short-term targets. Marketing needs to think also of long-term implications and own the metrics of brand and customer equity.
Create benchmarks
At General Mills, we conducted market research studies to predict what premium (toy in the cereal box) ideas would help sell best. At Sports Illustrated, using historical response rates, we were able to forecast what offers would allow us to most likely attain our circulation targets. For much smaller companies, there is often little to no historical data, no benchmarking. So entrepreneurs have the opportunity to create the starting point. For instance, each new trade show can be a comparison point - track cost per lead generated at each show and compare against each other.
In addition to these quantitative data can be an overlay of qualitative comments to be considered in decision-making. When I joined my first smaller company, I was amazed how colleagues in the industry would get out and compare notes. Talk to those you meet at industry events or friends in similar companies to collect additional data points.
Decide earlier rather than later what customer relationship management (CRM) system will be fitting for your company. When used well, a CRM tool will aid tremendously in tracking quantitative and qualitative metrics for a marketing campaign.
Jeff Slater, the director of global marketing for Nomacorc in Zebulon, said, "We view our Web site as analogous to a trade-show booth. Just like at a trade show, where you would establish a target of qualified visitors spending quality time at your booth, you want the same for your company's Web site. Using easily accessible tools like Google analytics allows you to easily determine how much time each visitor spends with you. You want to know that they have gained the information they need and to ultimately convert them.
"The overall idea is to establish metrics for each marketing activity and each year, continue refining. ... How would you know at the end of game if you won if you don't keep score? Keeping score is vital."
Sales, meet marketing
Marketing should develop a close working relationship with the sales organization. Yet the two are often combative. Professor Ben Shapiro of Harvard Business School, an international authority on sales management, said the biggest problem in business today "is that sales and marketing are in different fiefdoms. They don't even talk to each other."
I've had the privilege of working with three Triangle sales executives who have all gone on to start and run new businesses: Tom Hanlon at OpenSite, who is now a partner with A Shred Ahead; Scott England, vice president of business development at Zift Solutions; and Greg Burnell, who headed up sales at TogetherSoft and then founded 6th Sense Analytics. As the vice president of marketing, it was my priority to collaborate closely with my sales leader counterparts. I would sit in regularly on their sales meetings to understand their pain points and how marketing could best assist. A decade later, Tom and I can laugh about the "positive friction" we created between our two groups that actually helped drive our revenue targets. We were acquired by Siebel Systems, at the time the world's fastest-growing software company, two years after I joined. Siebel was looking for online auction software technology to add to their product mix, and our brand and customer equity outshone the competition.
At OpenSite, I asked each member of my marketing team to buddy up with a member of the sales team to really understand their prospect opportunities and challenges. While at The Learning Company, I traveled with our vice president of sales and his key account executives on corporate calls to share marketing programs that would help drive sales. Marketing should have a chance to walk in the shoes of the sales team. Offer to go on calls to help make the pitch.
So there you have it, the 12 steps to being a savvy entrepreneurial marketer. I look forward to hearing your success stories.
