Finding Marketing's ROI

Now that marketing budgets are on the chopping block for many firms, my in-house marketing colleagues are challenged, once again, to justify their existence and to quantify their value. “Show me the ROI” is the rule of the day. This makes sense, of course, but return on investment data does not invent itself in your marketing department. It comes from every area of the firm and from places outside it. Here are three simple things you can implement right now to ensure you get the information you want.

First, a caveat: those of you who are reducing marketing budgets need to do so with care. It’s one thing to trim fat, quite another to cut into bone. Strategic thinking is always helpful, particularly in times like these, because you can remain proactive rather than panicky. If your strategy is clear and everyone in the organization is on board with it, you can study and track what’s working in marketing (and elsewhere) and what might need restructuring.

Clarify your strategy. If your strategy is either nonexistent or murky, your marketing efforts almost certainly reflect that. Now is a good time to get very clear on your firm’s identity, its place in the business community, and your goals going forward. Ask your marketing pro to collect historical and current data on where your firm’s profits originate, how you got that work originally, and how you might expand on it. Ask her to survey your clients to find out why they stay with you and, of course, how you can improve. If you’re very smart and brave, ask your marketer to meet with former clients and find out why they left. The information you receive from these efforts must play a critical role in formulating or reformulating your strategy. This is a far cry from what I see often, which is a strategy I call “What the Partners Will and Won’t Do.”
Require your professionals to be disciplined in communicating data to your marketer so it can be shared firm-wide. Your marketing information is only as good as the efforts your professionals expend to communicate internally. Effective marketing means tracking data and outcomes related to advertisements, events, seminars, publicity, one-on-one meetings, and client surveys. It is almost always the professionals who will get follow-up contact, not your marketing person.
Allow marketing professionals consistent access to department, senior management, and board meetings. Firm meetings should rarely be secret or exclusive, and even then your marketers need to be clued in earlier than other team members, because they will likely have a hand in conveying your secret information. Marketers need to attend as many internal meetings as possible so they can both collect and communicate information. Emails from your marketer are of limited use, because they may go unread. The same is often true of your intranet. But five to ten minutes of face to face marketing time in meetings can get your marketer what he or she needs. It also sends a message to meeting participants that marketing remains an integral part of the firm’s success, particularly in a down economy.