Very little happens in marketing without money.  Securing enough money to support an organization’s goals is a fundamental responsibility of a CMO or a VP of Marketing.  Most heads of marketing learn from experience how to get what they need.  Unfortunately, many of them have to learn the hard way, through errors and inadequate budget allocations.  The reality is that many marketing executives simply lack basic skills in building, presenting, and defending budgets.  Remember that when an … [Read more...]

Many marketing teams struggle to demonstrate their value.  Marketing is often judged by executives who have no marketing experience and operate under basic misconceptions concerning the marketing function.  Moreover, these biases can affect marketing’s working relationships with other teams.  For these reasons it is critical for Marketing to objectively demonstrate its contributions to the business.  Creating cool ads and splashy events may be fun, but metrics have a longer-lasting and … [Read more...]

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” is a favorite management maxim.  It is commonly attributed to the legendary manufacturing quality guru William Deming, although nobody is certain who really coined it.   Regardless of whether Deming actually said it, however, he would no doubt agree that in marketing, as in any process-oriented task, measurement is a natural precondition to improvement.  Professional marketers should take heed.  Marketing efficacy can be improved only through continual … [Read more...]