Measurement Tip 17

Measure Your Event Marketing Program on Marketing Effectiveness, Not Sales 

A recent study of CEOs by The Fournaise Marketing Group revealed that a sizable majority of CEOs perceive that B2B Marketers have “started (wrongly) to focus on performance indicators that are actually not theirs, such as prospect conversions and revenue.”

This should be an important revelation to event marketers. Marketing must focus and grade itself on creating customer demand for the sales team to prove value, a point I have impressed upon students in my "How to Measure the Value of Tradeshows" classes.

The results of this study support a measurement philosophy that concentrates on marketing effectiveness. I have taken  excerpts from this article that I think are the most important points for trade show and event marketers.

“CEOs Want ROI Marketers 100% Focused on Generating, Tracking & Boosting Customer Demand for their Products/Services.”

The Fournaise Marketing Group 2012 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program conducted interviews with more than 1,200 large corporate and small and medium business CEOs and decision-makers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Here are some of the findings I think may be important to event marketers from this study:

“Marketers have lost sight that these (prospect conversions and revenue) are primarily Sales Force-related performance indicators, and that they should focus instead on the customer demand-related indicators directly linked to their job and for which they have 100% control.”

The findings demonstrate that executive management believes “Marketers are too disconnected from the financial realities of companies.”

“78% of these CEOs think Marketers too often lose sight of what their real job is: to generate more customer demand for their products/services in a business-quantifiable and business-measurable way.”

And, here is the definitive answer for the one circumstance most of us fear to be true.

“Unfortunately, 69% of the B2C CEOs believe B2C Marketers now live too much in their creative and social media bubble and focus too much on parameters such as “likes”, “tweets”, “feeds” or “followers” – the very parameters they can’t really prove generate more (business-quantifiable) customer demand for their products/services, and the very parameters judged “interesting but not critical” by CEOs.”

CEOs in the B2B market define customer demand as generating and delivering more qualified, “sales-ready” prospects to the sales pipeline or sales cycle of the business. These qualified prospects should be able to be converted faster into actual revenue by the sales team.

“To earn the CEOs trust, Marketers will need to transform themselves into ROI Marketers,” said Fournaise Group.

“75% of CEOs think Marketers misunderstand (and misuse) the “real business” definition of the words “Results”, “ROI” and “Performance” and therefore do not adequately speak the language of their top management.” The preference is for marketers to deliver and report on “the level of customer demand they are asked to deliver, instead of drowning everybody with data and analyses that are too remote from the P&L.”

The report demonstrates that 85% of B2B and B2C CEOs would like prospect-driven ROI Marketers to focus on tracking, reporting and boosting Marketing Specific Key Performance Indicators: Prospect Volume, Prospect Quality, Marketing Effectiveness Rate (defined as the percentage of Marketing spending that directly generated prospects) and the business potential generated by Marketing. This last element is what I have been referring to as ”Sales Potential" delivered by the interactions at a marketing event (see Measurement Tip 10)

Jerome Fontaine, CEO & Chief Tracker of Fournaise said, “Marketers will have to understand that they need to start “cutting the rubbish” if they are to earn the trust of CEOs and if they want to have a bigger impact in the boardroom.” “They will have to transform themselves into true business-driven ROI Marketers or forever remain in what 65% of CEOs told us they call Marketing la-la land.”

We can heed these warnings by taking direct aim at delivering sales ready prospects into the sales cycle of our company though events. We must finally embrace the sales team as the customer of marketing. And we must ensure that a large part of our event expenditures are funding those activities that generate prospects. Perhaps this study answers the perennial question, “should we be tracking and reporting sales results?” The answer appears to be no.

You can access the entire study summary here:

http://tinyurl.com/fournaisestudy 


Ed

If you would like more information on how to get started on an event marketing measurement program, please call me at +1.770.391.0015 or email me edjones@constellationcc.com




*Source (Articles Referenced): “80% of CEOs Do Not Really Trust Marketers (Except If They Are “ROI Marketers”). The Fournaise Marketing Group. July, 2012.

Measurement Tip # 1

Be regarded as a manager of the business as well as a manager of trade shows and events.

(This is the first in a series of articles for the MC2 eConnections Newsletter)

Your career opportunities expand rapidly if you are seen as a manager who affects the profitability of the organization and not just your own budget. The best way to do this is to relate the accomplishments you measure to the basic business profit equation.

Revenue – Expense = Profit

In fact, the following two simple concepts will be the underlying basis for this entire series of tips and articles:

1) Your success as an event marketing manager
2) Relating accomplishments to business profitability

So let’s get started. . .

Revenue related accomplishments in a marketing context are usually related to sales. Generating new sales through interactions and resulting leads with potential buyers is the most obvious. Not so obvious, is protecting and growing the revenue you already have through your existing customers. Your event plans should address both.

Expense related accomplishments in an event marketing context are virtually unlimited. Expense reductions (aka cost savings) impact profitability dollar for dollar. When you have your company CEO meet with thirty customers and prospects over three days at a major event, consider the savings to your company.

Would a trip for the CEO to meet with those same customers individually cost $10,000 or more?

If you use the media center at a big show to accomplish a major announcement or product launch, how much is saved compared to doing it independently?

When you reduce the number of sales calls from five to two for qualified visitors reached through your shows, what is the impact on sales expense?

When you develop new digital graphics, video, web pages and social media for a major show, how many times will those assets be reused in the future and for how many purposes?

The examples are endless. Expense reductions are the greatest and most varied opportunities available to you as an event marketing manager. Expense related accomplishments should be a part of every show plan.

Other measures will be discussed in this series as well. Cost efficiencies, such as Cost per Visitor, exhibit efficiencies such as Number of Visitors, communications efficiencies such as Number of Impressions, and even measures on the overall show or event such as Traffic Density.

A good measurement program will show if your events are paying off for the business and if they are being managed for optimum efficiency. Measurement will also show you how to improve your accomplishments in both categories. I hope you tune in each month as we expand on the knowledge and skills to justify and improve your events and elevate your status in the organization.

If you have any questions related to event measurement please call us at 770.391.0015

Ed