Marketing effectiveness is the measure of how effective a given marketer's

go to market Go-to-market or go-to-market strategy is the plan of an organization, utilizing their outside resources (e.g. sales force and distributors), to deliver their unique value proposition to customers and achieve competitive advantage. The end goal is ...

strategy is toward meeting the goal of maximizing their spending to achieve positive results in both the short- and long-term. It is also related to marketing ROI and return on marketing investment (ROMI). Marketing expert Tony Lennon believes marketing effectiveness is quintessential to

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

, going so far as to say ''It's not marketing if it's not measured.''

History

The concept of marketing effectiveness first came to prominence in the 1990s with the publication of Robert Shaw's ''Improving Marketing Effectiveness'' which won the 1998 Business Management Book of the Year Award. In the book ''What Sticks'' (), authors

Rex Briggs Rex Briggs (born 1971) is an author, award winning marketing ROI researcher. He began his career at Yankelovich Partners, where he was noted for his work in Generation X Minority marketing. While at Yankelovich, he is noted for developing a theory ...

and Greg Stuart calculated that marketers waste 37% of their marketing investment. Reasons for the waste include failure to understand underlying customer motivations for buying, ineffective messages, and inefficient media mix investment (pg 19–20). ''What Sticks'' was named the #1 Book in Marketing by

Ad Age ''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in mul ...

and is required reading at leading universities including the

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in ...

and Harvard, suggesting that the Marketing Effectiveness continues to be an important business topic. A preferred marketing effectiveness analysis i
marketing mix modeling

Factors driving marketing effectiveness

* Corporate: Each company operates within different bounds. These are determined by their size, their budget and their ability to make organizes act in similar ways leading to the need to segment them. Based on these segments, they make choices based on how they value the attributes of a product and the brand, in return for price paid for the product. Consumers build brand value through information. Information is received through many sources, such as, advertising, word-of-mouth and in the (distribution) channel often characterized with the

purchase funnel The purchase funnel, or purchasing funnel, is a consumer-focused marketing model that illustrates the theoretical customer journey toward the purchase of a good or service. In 1898, E. St. Elmo Lewis developed a model that mapped a theoretical ...

, a McKinsey & Company concept. Lastly, consumers consume and make purchase decisions in certain ways. * Exogenous Factors: External factors such as weather, interest rates, government regulations, etc. that lie outside of marketers' immediate control and may impact marketing effectiveness. Understanding the impact these factors have on consumers can help in designing programs that take advantage or mitigate the risk of these factors and the impact they may have on a marketing campaigns. Therefore, exogenous factors often influence how marketers strive to improve their results such as leveraging the factors noted above (i.e. seasonality, interest rates, regulatory environment) in an effort to improve marketing effectiveness. *

Marketing Strategy Marketing strategy allows organizations to focus limited resources on best opportunities to increase sales and achieve a competitive advantage in the market. Strategic marketing emerged in the 1970s/80s as a distinct field of study, further buil ...

: Improving marketing effectiveness can be achieved by employing a superior marketing strategy. By positioning the product or brand correctly, the product/brand will be more successful in the market than competitors’ products/brands. The match-up between the product, the consumer lifestyle, and the endorser is important for effectiveness of brand communication. Even with the best strategy, marketers must execute their programs properly to achieve extraordinary results. * Marketing Creative: Even without a change in strategy, better creatives can improve results. Without a change in strategy,

AFLAC Aflac Inc. (American Family Life Assurance Company) is an American insurance company and is the largest provider of supplemental insurance in the United States. The company was founded in 1955 and is based in Columbus, Georgia. In the U.S., A ...

was able to achieve stunning results with its introduction of the Duck (

) campaign. With the introduction of this new creative concept, the company growth rate soared from 12% prior to the campaign to 28% following it. (See references below, ''Bang''). Creatives are an integral part of any marketing campaign, as it establishes the corporate identity and plays a significant role in brand recollection. These may include designing point of purchase displays, brochures or even product packaging. Apart from communicating the brand, consistency in design across various mediums helps reinforce a specific offering in the minds of the audience. Using typography, imagery and color, marketing creatives evoke emotion related to a brand. * Marketing Execution: By improving how marketers go to market, they can achieve significantly greater results without changing their strategy or their creative execution. At the marketing mix level, marketers can improve their execution by making small changes in any or all of the 4-Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) (

Marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

) without making changes to the strategic position or the creative execution marketers can improve their effectiveness and deliver increased revenue. At the program level, marketers can improve their effectiveness by managing and executing each of their marketing campaigns better. It is commonly known that consistency of a Marketing Creative strategy across various media (e.g. TV, Radio, Print and Online), not just within each individual media message, can amplify and enhance the impact of the overall marketing campaign effort. Additional examples would be improving direct mail through a better call-to-action or editing web site content to improve its organic search results, marketers can improve their marketing effectiveness for each type of program. A growing area of interest within (

) and Execution are the more recent interaction dynamics of traditional marketing (e.g. TV or Events) with online consumer activity (e.g. Social Media). (See references below, ''Brand Ecosystems'') Not only direct product experience, but also any stimulus provided by traditional marketing, can become a catalyst for a consumer brand "groundswell" online as outlined in the book Groundswell. * Marketing Infrastructure (also known as

Marketing Management Marketing management is the organizational discipline which focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside enterprises and organizations and on the management of a firm's marketing resources and ac ...

): Improving the business of marketing can lead to significant gains for the company. Management of agencies, budgeting, motivation and coordination of marketing activities can lead to improved competitiveness and improved results. The overall accountability for

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create ...

leadership and business results is often reflected in an organization under a title within a (

Brand management In marketing, brand management begins with an analysis on how a brand is currently perceived in the market, proceeds to planning how the brand should be perceived if it is to achieve its objectives and continues with ensuring that the brand is pe ...

) department.

History

Factors driving marketing effectiveness

See also

References

Further reading