I couldn’t help but notice that a recent poll on Marketingmag.com.au showed that an overwhelming number of us (almost 50%) felt that our biggest challenges were measuring marketing ROI and securing internal support for budgets.  

These have always been among the top issues faced by marketers but I would have thought we’d started to get a handle on showing the value of our day-to-day activity by now. In fact, demonstrating the importance of our strategies and tactics is only going to become more paramount as companies pare back spending and watch budgets like hawks, thanks the recent downturn in the economy.

If justifying our budgets and measuring ROI are two of our most difficult challenges, how are we attempting to overcome this? This is a genuine question I’d like to put the industry and welcome any feedback in response to my blog. If we recognise these issues (among others) that must be dealt with, what tactics are we employing to show just how valuable our services and skills are?

Some might disagree but I actually believe it’s getting easier to justify marketing spend and how we’re contributing to the business bottom line through generating sales leads and much needed communication with customers and prospects. Never before has so much of our marketing been played out in the digital realm and therefore been so very easy to watch, measure and analyse.

Take a look at where you focus most of your marketing efforts. I’d suggest that a significant portion would include tactics such as blogs, emails, online advertising and social media channels. And while I’m certainly not saying that companies can forget offline mediums, I’m confident that most businesses would maximise their limited marketing resources by tapping into digital opportunities. The only problem is (it seems) we’re not tracking our efforts and translating these opportunities into measurable outcomes for the business. I’d suggest that’s where we’re losing executive confidence.

Imagine walking into a meeting with data and analysis that shows exactly how you and your marketing team have converted 35 high-end prospects into customers and generated 50 new leads through a strategic direct mail campaign targeting existing customers, over the last month. That’s the kind of data to back up your smarts with. Because you and I know we provide invaluable skills and knowledge to the business, we just need to know how prove it.