Achieving an ROI from marketing

Posted by Graeme Davidson on March 19, 2008

This is an extract taken from the e-consultancy website by James Harrison:

“With the much hyped credit crunch looming, there is greater emphasis for all business departments to justify their budgets. For sales this is a fairly straight forward process – how much are we spending on salaries and expenses measured against how much money is made. However, for marketing departments this is far harder to measure.

As a business overhead, the marketing function must now stop measuring itself against non-tangibles such as brand awareness and start to link its performance directly into the bottom line. They must be able to demonstrate to the rest of the company that their activities and results can show a clear ROI.

The actual measure can vary, but inevitably it will support the growth of the business either through increasing customer acquisition or driving sales. However, the biggest challenge marketing professionals face is that they need to change the view of what they do. They need to stop thinking of themselves as brand builders and reputation managers and now consider their role as a lead generating one. ”

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