How to Run Marketing Better with Effective Budgeting and Planning
How to Run Marketing Better with Effective Budgeting and Planning |
| How to Run Marketing Better with Effective Budgeting and Planning Posted: 23 Sep 2016 06:00 AM PDT It’s business planning season and we all know what that means — you’re in the trenches hustling to produce innovative, targeted, and dare I say it ‘proven’ business plans for how you are going to achieve corporate objectives and exceed revenue targets. And if you’re really honest, you want to impress leadership and climb a few rungs up the corporate ladder. Am I right? Perhaps. But, and it’s a big but, how do you decide what initiatives to undertake? Do you know the revenue impact of your plan? Are your plans aligned with what leadership really cares about? If these questions are making your head spin, don’t fret. Just remember, as a marketer you have two jobs: to do marketing and to run marketing. Without both wheels turning concurrently, you’ll soon find you’re veering off course and further away from your goals and revenue target. All Marketers Do Marketing (Obviously)Doing marketing is the front-office of marketing. It’s what is seen from the outside such as hosting events, sponsorships, and online advertising. In other words, it’s the initiatives you have listed in your marketing plan that are contributing to your marketing objectives. But doing marketing with no regard for how you run marketing is akin to throwing a dart at a dartboard, while blindfolded and hoping to hit the bullseye. Not to mention a disregard for the importance of a marketing system of record to accurately manage your marketing investments and track their impact — including targets, plans, forecasts, and actuals for both online and offline marketing activities. The Top Marketers Do and Run Marketing.As an Oracle Marketing Cloud customer, you’re a leader at doing marketing. But, how well organized are you to run marketing? For every great performance, regardless of the discipline, it’s the preparation, ongoing management and agile approach that help you maintain your performance and propel you forward. Running marketing means paying close attention to the ‘I’ in ROI and measuring to determine the next best marketing action aka Marketing Performance Management. The top marketers know where their dollars are being spent and most importantly, why. We’re not only talking at a campaign level but also at an executive and aggregate level. By connecting their campaigns and associated metrics to marketing budgets and corporate strategic plan data, the top marketers get a full view of their ROI and use that intel to influence their marketing plans and drive corporate revenue. The responsibility for marketing performance, through running and doing marketing, is no longer limited to the scope of the CMO. Marketers as a whole are increasingly asked to demonstrate their value to their organization. When you’re asked how your marketing plan is contributing to revenue growth, you want that information at your fingertips. Amanda Lomas, Director of Marketing Analytics at Change Healthcare and Eloqua customer, previously spent 5 days per month mapping her expenditure to her investments in a bid to determine her ROI. The process was time-consuming and challenging to complete without much notice. Now that she is a running and doing marketing expert, she has efficiently condensed that process to 3-4 hours! From a Walk to a RunAmanda isn’t alone. Hundreds of organizations are making the shift from an emphasis on only doing marketing to running and doing marketing simultaneously. Here are three easy steps to get your organization in the starting blocks:
Invest an hour and join our webinar on October 5th, co-hosted with Allocadia, to hear how Eloqua customers, Change Healthcare, and Symantec have optimized their marketing performance through more effective budgeting and planning. In return you’ll leave with practical tips to implement today, setting you on track for driving corporate revenue and demonstrating to leadership how your marketing team is adding tangible value. Now that’s positive ROI! The bottom line is always the bottom line. That's why you need to download the Marketing Budgets Report 2016, created by Econsultancy in association with Oracle Marketing cloud.
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| What Does the Future Hold For Agencies and Marketers? Posted: 22 Sep 2016 10:36 AM PDT If the past is any indication there is change in the future for agencies and marketers. I say that because according to a recent study conducted by Forbes Insights and sponsored by Oracle Marketing Cloud, 60% of brand and agency executives say their roles and responsibilities have changed significantly over the past two years. However, as the report points out, this is just the start. “As the changing nature of marketing impacts product development, sales and company culture, closer collaboration between brands and agencies is becoming more important than ever.” There is an undeniable shift when it comes to agencies and marketers and as a result “forward-thinking agencies are ready to serve a higher purpose than just being ‘idea factories’ for individual campaigns, in the words of one executive in Asia.” The executive in question is Jeff Cheong who is president of Tribal Worldwide Asia, a digital agency based in Seoul, South Korea. He believes the opportunity is to re-craft the traditional model to be able to say to a brand, “Maybe the solution to this problem is not an ad, maybe it’s new packaging or a shift in distribution, or a shift in how you sell the product.” Another significant change is the working relationships between agencies and brands. Modern marketing leaders such as Patrick Adams, head of consumer marketing, PayPal, North America are embracing new and closer working relationships. Adams says he very often doesn’t delineate between his full-time employees and his agency staff. “They’re all seen as one and the same as the relationships become tighter and more significant.” The Tech EffectTechnology has impacted pretty much everything so why should this be any different. The nature of relationships between clients, agencies, media partners and so has been greatly impacted by it (technology.) Scott Brinker, author at Chief Marketing Technologist says large brands expected to have a single martech suite by now to handle everything. In speaking with The Drum Brinker noted: “It hasn’t happened yet as the market isn’t static,” says Brinker. “Virtual reality, artificial intelligence, the Internet of things; hundreds of new technologies are coming to market every year,” he explains. “It’s not just like building the tower of Babel – it’s like building it while they change the blueprints each year.” Stephan Beringer, chief executive of Publicis Groupe’s adtech hub VivaKi says building collaborative relationships between agencies, clients and technology providers is key to navigate the change. As Oracle Marketing Cloud sales director Ghislain Lefebvre says we are focused on training all of our partners, including media agencies to be tech experts for their client in using OMC solutions – especially when it comes to using data management platforms (DMP) where specific skills and culture are important to doing so successfully. The fact is clients are clearly at the center of this sea change. They are increasingly asking agencies and holding companies to simplify and scale (across geo and platforms) at the same time. It is more than apparent that clients are are expecting even more change to come. Not All Smooth SailingOf course change very often isn’t easy as it causes people to think and act differently than they have in the past; people get very comfortable – almost too comfortable. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why nearly half of the survey respondents said that evolving brand and agency roles are making successful collaboration more difficult. But it would appear that many are not only aware of these changes but are accepting of it too as 60% of respondents said they believe closer brand and agency collaboration will become even more important in the coming year. Since there is so much volatility and uncertainty going on when it comes to the agency/brand relationship you owe it yourself to join me Tuesday, September 27th at 2PM ET for The “Agency” of the Future: a Conversation with Stalwarts and Upstarts. As part of Advertising Week this session will feature a panel discussion including myself, Andrew Bruce, CEO, Publicis Worldwide, North America, North America and Chris Lederer, Principal, Strategy&, a PwC member firm. And for more insights and findings from the Forbes Insights study, download The Age of Brand, Agency & Customer Collaboration.
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