Don’t be happy, worry!

Have you met a really happy marketing executive lately?

The ones I have met with are all running hard and fast. They are stressed. Worried. They are under fire from all sides to prove their worth and to justify the value of their marketing spends, staffs and budgets.

They also are trying to put some definition around just what they should be measuring, and defining key performance indicators (KPI’s) and metrics that they’ll be held accountable for. To that end, they have their work cut out for them.

According to a landmark survey by the CMO Council, “Measures and Metrics: The Marketing Performance Measurement Audit,” 90 percent of senior marketing executives say marketing performance measurement is a top priority, yet only 20 percent have a comprehensive metrics framework in place.

Furthermore, a WebTrends “confidence” survey of hundreds of Web marketers indicates that 26 percent admit to “flying blind” when measuring marketing results.

No wonder marketing people are stressed. No wonder the pressure is on to figure it out.

One solution? Take the offensive on marketing performance measurement and develop and communicate an executive dashboard or scorecard based on your Web channel.  You’re Web site is a virtual goldmine of data just waiting to be mined. Yet too often, the data is collected as Web analytics, but it does not get analyzed, shared and acted on.

In a ClickZ series called Five Things Every CMO Must Know About Web Analytics, writer Shane Atchison discusses how you can prepare such a Web scorecard, and link this to your company’s goals, your department’s objectives and Key Performance Indicators to provide a quick but compelling and quantifiable story about how marketing and the Web are helping drive results.

While there are some common ideas for elements to be included in a scorecard or dashboard, it still comes down to what matters most for your business.

For example, one of our clients who markets nationally focuses on Web site “rush hours” related to the impact on call and Web support center staff and staffing needs throughout that day.

Another client uses the tens of thousands of sales-brochure downloads each month as a way to quantify and provide a dollar figure to the ROI of moving visitors online instead of sending the actual marketing materials via “snail mail.” 

Another client tracks initial online leads all the way through to an offline sale, providing a wealth of data along the way about site content and functionality to enable a more efficient purchasing decision. 

In all cases, even though reams of visitor behavior data and reports are available, marketing executives now are asking for summaries via one-page “bottom line” reports that they in turn can share in an elevator ride with their bosses.

The key, as Atchison describes, is that the marketing executives have taken the lead to define what matters most, and they are doing something with the data to make it meaningful, relevant and concise. More than that, they are taking and making time to communicate this information far and wide within the organization. 

In doing so, marketing people are making headway at turning a major marketing worry into a win.  They might even sleep a little better at night, as well.