Talk about marketing accountability has become almost commonplace. And most marketing executives “get it.” They understand the need to know the numbers.


The real question is, “Which numbers?

Marketing Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance-Driven Marketing Organization answers those questions and addresses those problems with a balance of sound theory and technique and practical application.

The author, a veteran of marketing on both “sides”—the client side and the consultant side—explains how you need to make marketing metrics work for you. First, every company’s product makeup, competitive situation, resources, and internal strengths and weaknesses differ. So do its needs for particular metrics. It is necessary to be able to identify which metrics matter to your organization’s circumstances.

Next it is necessary to create a culture of accountability. Everyone in the organization has to be—and be seen as being—on the same side and on the same page. Finance can’t be seen as “the enemy,” and Sales and Marketing need work especially hard to coordinate their efforts. But this sense of accountability needs to extend from the C-Suite to the customer service and order entry people. Everyone must be on board.

With buy-in from the entire organization, using quality approaches and sophisticated ideas have a much better chance of success in the marketplace. A metrics audit will help establish where you are now, and mapping will enable you to align processes to better develop your dashboard. Chapters on systems and tools and skills and training, with important contributions by key industry thought leaders, conclude the main body of the book. A glossary and an  appendix of sample process maps end the book.

Newly minted MBAs, flush with confidence, are often heard to say, “Forget that other stuff. Just give me your number. Tell me what metric you’re using.” Marketing Metrics in Action does much more than just give you a number or a one-size-fits-all formula. It provides wise counsel for identifying which metrics matter most to your organization and practical guidance for putting all the sophisticated marketing tools to profitable

Acknowledgements

Foreword to Metrics in Action by Koen Pauwels

Preface

Introduction to Marketing Metrics in Action:
Creating a Performance-Driven Marketing Organization


Section I What We Need and Where We Are

1. Measure What Matters
2. The State of Measuring Marketing


Section II Key Factors for Success

3. Creating a Culture of Accountability
4. Ten Questions Every CEO Should Ask about Measuring Marketing
5. Finance: From Adversaries to Allies
6. Sales and Marketing Alignment: Dancing to the Same Beat
7. Using a Quality Approach
8. Marketing Operations: The Science Side of Marketing


Section III From Ideas to Practice

9. The Metrics Continuum: A Framework
10. Conducting a Metrics Audit
11. Mapping: A Process for Alignment
12. Developing Your Dashboard and Specification
13. Systems and Tools
14. Skills and Training


Conclusion

Appendix A: Glossary of Key Marketing and Metrics Terms

Appendix B: Sample Process Maps

List of Figures and Tables

About the Author and Contributors

Wait a second . . . holding marketers accountable for their efforts? Applying metrics in a meaningful, results-oriented way? Making marketing understandable and process-based? Real take-aways in each chapter? Read this book, folks. Your business will be better for it.

Joseph Carrabis
CRO and Founder
NextStage Evolution, LLC

---

 

Companies are demanding more from marketing—more data, more accountability, and more payoff. As the pressure increases, marketers need to develop the skills and utilize the resources necessary to improve their performance. Metrics in Action is an invaluable new resource that puts marketing metrics in the context of creating a performance-driven, accountable, and profit-generating marketing organization. Written for marketing professionals at all levels, Metrics in Action not only explains what they need to do, but shows them step by step how to do it.

Mitchell Goozé
Former CEO
Teledyne Components
Author of Value Acceleration

---

 

Whether you are a neophyte or a marketing leader, Metrics in Action has something for you. Use the guidance this important book offers to make your marketing efforts profoundly relevant to the business—and prove it!

Steve Harriman
VP, Marketing
NetQoS, Inc.

---

 

In Marketing Metrics in Action, Laura Patterson has provided marketers with an essential guide that will help them to be successful in their work. Drawing on her wide knowledge of marketing practices in major corporations, she points out that marketers today are measuring lots of things—but most of them are the wrong things! Much of what is being measured is not related to the essential business goals of the enterprise: market share, lifetime value and brand equity. In a book filled with contributions from key marketing executives in major corporations, Laura gives readers a priceless guide to selecting the right measurements that show, through dashboards, how marketing is contributing to the success of the business. Laura explains how marketing can work in cooperation with sales and finance to turn competition into collaboration resulting in a win-win situation for both. With this book, marketing can develop the metrics needed to create a culture of accountability for achieving the outcomes needed by top management. This book should be read by marketers in all major corporations.

Arthur Middleton Hughes
Vice President, Solutions Architect
KnowledgeBase Marketing
Author of Successful Email Marketing Strategies

---

 

The need for Marketing to drive both strategy and execution has never been more acute. In asserting its responsibility to achieve profitable growth, Marketing must take the lead in driving integration and creating a common focus throughout an organization in order to demonstrate its value. Laura Patterson provides a vital framework for Marketing to garner the support of the C-suite and to build its leadership by helping achieve desired business outcomes and demonstrating performance in quantitative terms relative to those outcomes. If you want to understand how Marketing can be more effective, you've come to the right place!

Stuart Itkin
Former CMO
Kronos, Inc.

---

 

Laura Patterson's book Marketing Metrics in Action is a genuine self-help book for marketers desperately trying to be relevant to their businesses. She tackles in a straightforward, checklist approach not only the "how" we should measure our activities, but the important "why." She pinpoints the key factors of success within marketing and gives suggestions for how to ensure that the entire organization from sales to finance understand marketing's contribution. A must read for any marketer who has had to answer the question—"so why do we need marketing?"

Theresa Kushner
Director, Customer Intelligence and Strategic Marketing
Cisco Systems, Inc.

---

 

Laura Patterson does a wonderful job of articulating the foundations of effective marketing measurement. If you’re thinking about how to move your marketing organization along a more productive path, you’ll find this book very helpful.

Pat LaPointe
Managing Partner
Marketing NPV

---

 

Laura Patterson is the Emeril of Marketing Measurement—always kicking it up a notch. In her newest book, Laura provides practical advice and an easy-to-use benchmarking tool to help marketers improve the performance of their business unit, ultimately establishing marketing as the strategic, competitive advantage it is.

Christine Lowry
CMO
Athens Group

---

 

Laura Patterson’s deep, practical knowledge of marketing measurement shines from every page of this book. Marketing Metrics in Action goes beyond the usual lectures on why marketing metrics are important, to explain exactly how you can design, build and deploy a set of measures that will improve performance in your own organization--and advance your own career.

David M. Raab
Principal
Raab Associates Inc.

---

 

Laura Patterson’s journey in establishing marketing metrics is a valuable addition to the recent body of literature on the critical importance of greater accountability in marketing investments and actions. Instead of throwing her hands in the air and saying how difficult it is to measure marketing, she demystifies the area and provides essential tools that every company, large and small, can use to its benefit.

Peter J. Rosenwald
Managing Partner
Consult Partners
Founder and President, Wunderman Worldwide
former Chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi Direct
Author of Accountable Marketing

---

 

Eat less and exercise more. Every New Year's Eve, it's the same thing. Good advice and good intentions. A good idea–even with a good plan—is insufficient without a good measurement method to help monitor, encourage and communicate progress. In Marketing Metrics in Action, Laura Patterson combines years of first-hand experience and insight with some of the best thinking of our time to map out the philosophy, strategy and specific techniques for moving your marketing results from aspiration to computation.

This is not a book about data mining or predictive modeling. It's about managing by objective and measuring the impact of your marketing efforts. And it comes along just in time. As the economy grows weaker, having superior visibility into your marketing ROI is an absolute necessity. When the economy gets stronger, a rigorous marketing measurement capability is a significant competitive edge.

My advice? Eat less, exercise more, monitor how much you eat and exercise, and take the lessons of Marketing Metrics in Action to heart. You'll live longer, healthier and more profitably.

Jim Sterne
Chairman
Web Analytics Association