The Marketing Performance Index, Part 4
We are all measured since the day we’re born. In the marketing function, performance is the difference maker – not experience, expertise, effort or endurance- just results. In my previous three blogs on the Marketing Performance Index (MPI), I’ve explained the genesis, design, metrics, and definitions for the 24 key metrics it tracks. In this blog, and others that will follow, I’ll share some tips to raise your score. The MPI is based on my tenures as a CMO, having created more than $20 billion in pipeline, industry benchmarks and best practices, and validation by dozens of CMO peers.
Now I’m going to share some ways to address underperformance across the three major measurement components (Market Presence, Brand Strength and Pipeline Health), and six key performance indicators (reach, share, engagement, loyalty, pipeline, and progression). I chose these indicators, and the four measurements for each, based on where my peers and I believe marketers can have the most impact. It’s important to note, however, that every company and market dynamic is unique, and the metrics that matter most, or are dictated or perceived to matter most, are the ones to focus on. The framework is designed to be easily customized to help drive better performance across the board for the entire marketing function and help marketing leaders and their companies drive continuous improvement.
Let’s start with strategies and tactics to improve the Market Presence metrics of reach and share. The four reach metrics are: Earned Media, Social Media, Site Visitors, and Events Reach.
Earned Media is generally the coverage a company generates in its relevant categories, and it’s best to gauge success relative to key competitors. That way you know you are either gaining or losing ground in the battle for mindshare. If you are in an early stage or emerging growth company, PR can be a strategic weapon to “punch above your weight,” be a disruptive voice and seize the high ground vs. more established competitors.
At Emburse, my team and I positioned the company around a new concept of Optimizing Spend (“Don’t Just Expense It, Emburse It!”), and garnered more coverage than many of our larger competitors. Social Media coverage depends on which platforms are relevant to your customers and prospects. For example, if LinkedIn is the primary platform used by your target audience, you’ll need to build a significant following to support ongoing growth.
At Billtrust, my team and I more than tripled followers from around 30k to nearly 100k in one year. This was by design, and it was not merely having a savvy social posting strategy. The content we created, published, amplified and curated was very thoughtfully crafted, measured and refined in order to engage the audience and help propel the company forward.
Site Visitors is a proxy for overall Web presence health. There are a wide range of metrics that matter for what I refer to as Web vitality, including New Visitors, Bounce Rate, Time on Site, Form Fills and Conversions, etc., however, growing web traffic is a leading indicator that generally signifies a healthy website. Finally, Events Reach is an estimate of the percentage of industry events that the company participates in as a proxy for how visible a company is to their prospects. It’s really common sense: you want to be seen when prospects are looking and “capture demand” both digitally and at in-person events.
The four Share metrics are: SOV (share of media voice), Indirect Sales (as a % of total Sales), Unbranded Search (as a proxy for SEO effectiveness) and Branded Search (your company/brands). Share of Voice is a comparative metric to gauge how your company is garnering press coverage (features, mentions, bylines, etc.) relative to your key competitors. There are a lot of great practitioners and agencies who can help you raise your relative score. In my experience, however, ideally you have a dedicated person on your team to optimize SOV through a combination of in-house directed communication initiatives and externally developed and/or supported ones.
Indirect Sales is a key metric because every company can benefit by expanding their ecosystem of channels and partners that refer, resell, support or otherwise endorse the company’s product and service offerings. Plus, partner ecosystem expansion can be both very efficient (at a much lower relative cost than direct Sales expense) and help bolster and reinforce your brand position. Most customers look to purchase a “whole product,” meaning the capabilities your firm offers, combined with all of your partners, enterprise connectors and platform integrations. It can also be somewhat of a “flywheel effect,” whereby as your ecosystem is increased, it can shorten the Sales cycle and reinforce choosing your company over “direct only” alternatives that go it alone.
Unbranded Search is one of the 24 key metrics that can have an outsized impact on your demand engine. With a comprehensive SEO strategy, augmented by GenAI tools and optimization techniques, companies can generate a significant amount of inbound traffic that can help build pipeline. I’ve achieved greater than 10% of inbound leads from systematic approaches to SEO and Web site optimization and, while CMO of Kofax, our SEO approach helped us land some seven figure deals that otherwise would never have materialized.
The four engagement metrics are: Social Media, Owned Events, Community, and Third Party Events. Engagement is simply how engaged your audience is, whether as first-time prospects or customers for life. If you have say 50,000 followers who are largely unengaged (1% or less) vs. a competitor who has say 10,000 followers who are highly engaged (5% or more), and let’s say is adding followers fasters, it’s easy to determine that the more engaged audience is more activated, and more likely to respond to your communications, campaigns and overall value proposition, leading to higher closed-won sales and revenue.
Owned Events (whether in-person or online) have been a difference maker at every one of the companies where I’ve been the CMO. Whether to drive engagement, build brand, enhance loyalty, and increase product line adoption, these are critical to company success in my view. The difference between designing and executing effective owned events, or doing a mediocre job, can be the difference between making the quarter or missing it, and at a minimum, greatly influence customer advocacy and relative brand strength.
For Community, I’m referring to companies that have created, developed and nurtured customer relationships through one or more formal structures, such as Customer Councils, Advisory Boards, and the like, as well as online (internal or licensed platforms) communities that foster engagement, increase adoption and lower customer support costs. Some have referred to a customer community as “creating a movement,” around your company, and certainly having more customers using, supporting and endorsing your products and services can create sustainable competitive advantage. The best-known tech brands often have the strongest communities, which of course makes it much hard to displace these market leaders.
So that covers half of the 24 metrics in the Marketing Performance Index (four each for reach, share, and engagement. In the next blog, I’ll provide tips and techniques to boost your scores for the other three performance indicators, loyalty, pipeline, and progression, and cover the 12 associated metrics.
In the meantime, if you’d like to take the MPI assessment while I’m developing the online, self-serve version, send me a note and I’d be happy to arrange at no cost.
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