Marketing still to prove its real value

Despite improvements in the measurement capabilities and competencies of marketers, and the availability of new resources and best practices, marketing in general still does not live up to promises of high performance, according to the 7th annual Marketing Performance Management and Measurement (MPM) Survey from VisionEdge Marketing.

The online survey of 210 business and marketing executives found that, when it comes to using metrics to help drive profitability, marketers are "talking the talk but not walking the walk".

CEOs not seeing marketing value
According to Laura Patterson, president for VisionEdge Marketing, "The results still show that most marketers aren't getting an 'A' grade from their CEOs, and this is going to continue until the marketing department can articulate its value in financial terms to the organisation."

The demand has increased over the past four years for marketing departments to tangibly demonstrate the value they contribute to the business. However, in that time, marketers have not yet made significant progress in measuring their own performance in financial terms.

Key findings
The main findings from this year's survey identified three key problems that have prevented marketing departments from articulating their value and showing how marketing is helping achieve the desired business results:

1. Marketing plans and actions are not aligned with business goals
   Many marketers are still failing to include in their plans (and even to track) any indicators that are tied to increased profitability. Instead, most continue to focus on tactical measures and metrics.
    
2. Marketing investments aren't aligned with intentions
   Even though marketers realise that they need to make changes in order to improve performance and demonstrate the department's business value, only 35% reporting having any budget set aside to train marketing personnel on how to track and improve marketing performance.
    
3. Best practices still elude most marketers
   Despite of their desire to improve performance, many marketers do not do any best practice benchmarking at all. In fact, 39% fail to audit and benchmark their metrics regularly, although 44% reported planning to do so within the year.