Marketing Metrics that Will Help You Keep Your Job

As a senior marketing manager, the metrics that you choose to measure, analyze and report to your CEO and CFO will have a big impact the size of your marketing budget, the stability of your job and the influence your team will have on the strategy of your organization. As a graduate marketing student in the Northwestern University Medill Integrated Marketing Communications program, I have sought to identify some of the key metrics that you should be tracking and utilizing to improve the performance of your marketing organization.
 

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In his article “The Most Important Marketing Metrics” on B2B Marketing Insider, Michael Brenner outlines several key marketing metrics that every senior marketing manager should be using to run their business. He argues that if you get just one metric to present to your CEO and CFO, it should be Return on Marketing Investment, also known as ROMI. This metric calculates your company’s financial return on marketing investments, and it’s often helpful to break down your marketing by activities or channels and identify what brings the most return for your investment. In a future post we’ll delve into a few more key metrics to consider for your organization.

If you want to understand the math behind the metrics, or need to educate members of your staff who will be responsible for collecting and analyzing these metrics for you, then I recommend you check out “A Simple Explanation of the Math Behind 7 Common Marketing Metrics”, written by Ryan Ghods and published on the Hubspot website. He argues that whatever role you play in the marketing world, it’s becoming increasingly important that you have an understanding of—and level of comfort with—the math behind the metrics you cite every month.

Based on my experience and research, there are three actions that I recommend you take as you incorporate marketing metrics into your organization:

1.     Identify metrics for survival—Identify the key marketing metrics to track and report to the C-suite so that you can improve your marketing results and keep your job.

2.     Understand the numbers behind the numbers—Understand the math behind the metrics so that you can calculate them with confidence and ease.

3.     Make the numbers count—Confidently interpret the meaning and relevance of the metrics and be able to discuss the strategic implications with C-suite executives.

Today more than ever, it’s critical that you understand the impact of each marketing investment on your organization. If you can’t confidently identify and measure which aspects of your marketing deliver financial returns for your company, then your credibility and influence will suffer. Not to mention your career. 

What metrics do you track to improve the performance of your marketing efforts? Which metrics have been the most helpful in improving your business?

 

About Scott Knudsen 

Scott Knudsen is Director of Brand Strategy & Project Management for Murray Brand Communications, a San Francisco-based marketing services firm. He is also a graduate student in the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School. He focuses on a customer-centric, data-driven integrated approach to marketing communications that combines marketing analytics with strategy. You can reach him with questions or comments on Twitter @ScottKnudsen