Top Tips for Improving Marketing Performance and Return On Investment

What are the key drivers to improving marketing performance?

Once you know you are on track using your actionable insights then it’s time to look at how to improve your marketing performance. Simply aspiring to data-driven actionable insights and decision-making, isn’t going to make it happen. To consistently harness actionable insights to improve your marketing performance and your return on investment (ROI), you need the right talent, technology, culture and strategic review processes in place.

Tip 1 – The right talent

You need analysts and marketers who:

• are good at measuring and reviewing marketing performance data and information against objectives and desirable outcomes (critical thinkers)
• have commercial acumen
• think broadly, strategically and in-depth
• are curious, intelligent and creative problem solvers
• mindful of biases and consider data through different lenses
• develop and methodically test hypotheses
• are good communicators and storytellers (to help decision-makers see the big picture and act on the results)
• are good collaborators (so they can elicit information from others)
• have a growth mindset.

Tip 2 – The right technology

You need technology to capture, store and make data and information available for analysis and evaluation. With the right technology, data and information can be synthesised and presented in easy-to-digest formats, ready for analysis and evaluation. This saves time and enables analysts and marketers to focus on drawing insights.

Tip 3 – A supportive culture

Your culture needs to be supportive of the behaviours, beliefs, and practices that lead to data-driven actionable insights and decision-making. A culture that encourages data, information and knowledge sharing, and experimentation (test and learn) will also lead to the sharing of opinions, understanding and new ideas. In this type of culture, analysts and marketers with the relevant skills and mindsets will excel at what they do best and, in turn, help the business to improve its marketing and overall business performance.

Tip 4 – Strategic review process

When you plan your marketing activities strategically, you will know, or at least have theories and expectations about how everything in your marketing mix will work together to achieve your marketing objectives and long-term goals.

Therefore, when you review marketing performance, you need to do so from this strategic perspective and be careful that you are not biased in looking for insights that only support an existing or favoured hypothesis.

A strategic review process provides a structured approach to evaluate strategy and review progress. In particular, it helps a business to be proactive rather than reactive. It brings together the key decision makers and gives them specific time and space to evaluate actionable insights, think and plan strategically, and make informed decisions.

For these reasons, a strategic review process is critical to ensure that actionable insights are leveraged. In turn this will help to improve marketing performance and your ROI.