I’m Kenneth Vogt, Commercial Director of Bitesize Bio and founder of Vera Claritas Inc. I play the role of Richard Roeper, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert all rolled into one, reviewing and highlighting the webinars and video presentations found at the Life Science Marketing Society.
Today I’m commenting on the presentation entitled:
Is My Marketing Working?
It is described this way:
This webinar is perfect for those involved in marketing planning and achieving marketing objectives. If you have increasing accountability for revenue goals, that is a good thing (even though it may not feel like it now!) In fact, 2017 research has identified that 62% of B2B companies report achieving or even exceeding revenue goals as a direct result of increased marketing responsibility for revenues.
With increasing focus from the C-suite and your finance counterparts on where marketing budgets are being spent, and what revenues are being generated as a result, it is important to optimize your marketing operations. A focus on strategic planning to lay the foundations for success, establishing the right resources to deliver the programs, and systems to generate real insights on results are critical. This webinar will introduce you to the concept of Marketing Performance Management as an essential component of successful marketing, and provide a framework for success for budget optimization, and ultimately achieving your revenue goals.
Learn about the new ‘4 Ps’ of marketing:
- Planning:
- Strategic marketing planning to lay the foundation for success
- Process:
- Setting and managing budgets
- Resource assessment
- Systems and tools to help
- Partnership:
- Effective marketing partner selections
- Perfection:
- Measurement that matters
This presentation is brought to you by Laura Browne, CEO of Covalent Bonds. Laura has worked in life science marketing since 2003, delivering for big name clients like Thermo, Agilent, Bruker and Waters.
What I learned from Laura is you are potentially missing out on four critical things when it comes to tying your marketing spends to revenue.
When the C-suite turns their attention to you and asks, “Is our marketing working?”, do you have a satisfying answer? You will if you have a proper marketing operations framework that is poised to generate the data-driven answers your executives hunger for.
To deliver on that promise, you need more than just marketing tactics. You need a marketing framework that represents the business of marketing operations. So let’s get down to business:
1) Where is your strategic plan?
Effective strategy delivers on three key things: objectives, key results and an action plan. More and more, the desired result from marketing is a direct tie to revenue. If you don’t know what you are working toward, you can’t move in the direction of your goal. And if you don’t know how to link actions to results, you can’t demonstrate your success. Your continued access to budget and even your very employment may well rest on that success.
So how do you measure marketing’s impact on revenue? You have to go beyond just measuring marketing activity to linking it to buying activity. It takes not just marketing performance but marketing performance management that follows the delivery of marketing all the way to its end result.
2) Do you have an effective process?
If you are to go beyond just running ads, or offering samples, white paper downloads and the like, you need a process that gets everyone (inside the marketing department and beyond) on the same page:
- Alignment — Make sure everyone is expecting the same thing, or at least that everyone’s expectations are anticipated; and make sure you have what you need (budget, resources and systems) to deliver on those expectations
- Transparency — Marketing can’t be a black box or a dark art anymore, show what you are doing and what you are getting for what you have done
- Quantitative Evidence — You know what everyone wants, now make sure you prove you delivered it in a measurable way
- Insights — Learn something from the results and feed it back to the next planning phase
3) Are you going it alone?
The tools available to implement best practices both for your industry and for the discipline of marketing are more robust and more affordable than ever before. There are experts out there that wield these tools like ninjas. Getting expert guidance and fresh perspectives can be money well spent for a high return on investment. If you do it right, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel and you don’t have to put yourself or your staff through a punishing learning curve. Use the quality resources that are readily available to expand the capacity and effectiveness of your marketing team.
4) Are you measuring the right stuff in the right way?
Measure what matters. Does it help identify ROI? Then do it. If you can’t identify a way to measure your objectives or you haven’t got the budget or capacity to measure those objectives, you have the wrong objectives. Go back the drawing board and figure out what you can work toward that you can actually see succeeding or even failing so you can adjust or pivot.
Following Laura’s process will give your marketing department more gravitas and more ammo when it comes time to set department budgets. CEO’s, CFO’s and other top executives like nothing better than to see that their budgets get provable, predictable, reliable results. So give it to them and raise your visibility in your organization.
Laura packed so much more in the way of specifics into her presentation. You are going to want to see the whole webinar. Find it here:
Linking Marketing To Revenue: Helping Life Scientists Answer the Question ‘Is My Marketing Working?’ Using a Marketing Operations Framework
For more analysis, observation and witty repartee, be sure to check out our podcast with our very own Dr. Nick Oswald and Harrison Wright, plus interesting and exciting guests. Here is the specific episode examining the presentation above.
But you know you want more. Subscribe to the Life Science Marketing Society podcast here: iTunes | Soundcloud
Photo credit: Steve Fernie