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PM Forum - London
Measuring effectiveness
Clearly this was a burning topic for many in professional services, as it attracted a lively and diverse group to MoFo’s excellent offices at Citypoint.
The speakers were from radically different backgrounds. David Gilroy, Sales and Marketing Director for Conscious Solutions, a 19 person digital marketing specialist. Graham Munday, Global Head of Marketing at WSP, a 900 person, global property and energy company. So they offered different but complementary perspectives.
It was pointed out from the start that, however much theory you apply to this issue, the internal clients (generally the partners) have very clear needs that they express with some force, namely, “Get our people in front of clients and create business opportunities” (or as David preferred to say, “sales”).
David went on to demonstrate how, in the digital world, it is possible to measure marketing initiatives quite precisely by monitoring click through rates and tracking sales through the CRM system. He also stressed how important it was to be clear up front about what success would look like. Set a clear target based on how many sales are needed to fund the activity and then compare the actual performance.
Graham was realistic about WSP’s progress on measurement, but went on to present some excellent examples of real life campaigns that had clearly had a significant impact on the business. He emphasised the need to look at a broader set of measures that stretched from financials and other hard statistics to more qualitative measures such as leadership observations and the impact on staff pride.
Another key point made was that marketing professionals are very much dependent on being effective through the medium of the fee earner. So the way in which fee earners are engaged in marketing and the tools they are given, for example, to cross-sell and up-sell are critical to campaign effectiveness.
Of course, as we marketers are well aware, perception is reality. So effectiveness is as much about how internal perception as about external reality. To that end, it was suggested that marketing departments need to do more to ensure their personal impact and also to merchandise their activities and results throughout the firm.
The effectiveness of David and Graham’s presentation could be measured by the lively debate that ensued. There was discussion of the extent to which effectiveness was about producing short term sales or building long term brand equity. It was also pointed out that effectiveness was as much about precision of inputs as it was about quality and quantity of outputs.
One thing’s for certain. This was a topic that could have run and run, had it not been for the lure of wine and canapés...
Geoff Dodds
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