How to Use Measured Marketing to Deliver True ROI

British entrepreneur Alan Sugar once said, “I’ve written books on marketing—cheque books!” It's a sentiment shared by many CEOs the world over. The problem with marketing in many organizations is that everyone recognizes it as necessary, but as soon as budgets tighten or results aren’t clear, they start to lose faith and question what value marketing actually delivers to the business. This means the marketing professional is under continual pressure to demonstrate the value of their role and output.

We’ve all heard the old adage, “Half my marketing budget is delivering amazing results; I just don’t know which half!” And this is half the problem. Measuring the ongoing performance and ultimate success of your sales process is easily done—typically following a clearly defined process, leads are tracked through the sales pipeline with business ultimately lost or closed. But lead generation from marketing is almost always considered an area of ambiguity.

How many of us actually know the true value our company’s marketing activity contributes to the business? Can you determine at any point in time how well your marketing program is performing against objectives? Are your marketing and sales teams working to the same objectives? Do you even have clear objectives defined?

If you can’t answer those questions easily, then you should definitely think about adopting a measured approach to marketing. Without it, you’re effectively operating in the dark, with no way of knowing how much—or little—marketing has contributed to your company’s sales performance.