| Brand
awareness and advertising expenditure top the
list of the metrics that marketers report to their
Chief Executives and boards. But the metrics that
senior executives are most interested in - such
as return on investment - are largely ignored.
A
new survey claims marketers are preoccupied with
reporting traditional measures of success, such
as sales volume, market share, customer satisfaction
and customer acquisition/retention, when they
should focus on measures that are more financially
orientated.
The
inaugural Marketing Measures survey was conducted
by the Chief Marketing Officers' Forum among 30
of its members, including Ford Australia, AMP,
Telstra, Accenture and St George Bank.
It
looked at the four marketing measures of brand,
customer focus, sales and employee brand and satisfaction
and to whom they were reported.
The
CMOF concluded that marketers operated from a
"redundant" measurement framework.
"Marketing
as a profession needs a clear set of measurement
metrics. Marketing doesn't speak the language
of boards, but it can," said the Director
of Marketing at Accenture Asia-Pacific, Caroline
Trotman.
Just
over half the respondents reported results to
the board, while 41 per cent reported to their
Chief Executive. Although 88 per cent were on
the senior executive team, only 6 per cent were
board members.
"Very
large organisations participated in this survey
and one would think they would have more sophisticated
measures, but the results show they are still
almost at an elemental level," said a marketing
consultant and CMOF member, Dianne Davis.
"Until
marketers get accountability and credibility around
hard measures, we won't get the ear of the CFO,
CEO and board."
The
most commonly reported brand measures were relative
pricing, brand preference, brand usage, retention,
purchase intent and availability. Brand valuation
ranked last.
Among
customer measures, customer satisfaction was the
most popular reporting measure, followed by customer
retention and acquisition.
Spending
behaviour was given little attention.
In
sales measures, sales volume and market share
were the most common measures. Cost of sales per
customer ranked last.
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