Making marketing systematic, disciplined and quantifiable

Few executives measure what they expect from marketing.

Lacking better methods, marketing's performance is often inferred (indirectly and in retrospect) from the performance of other corporate functions. But the performance of other corporate functions (for example, sales) is not an accurate indicator of marketing's execution. And even if it were, it provides little insight as to how marketing is performing right now.

Marketing is the most critical corporate function. Among its key responsibilities is achieving strategic convergence and operational alignment. But strategies can be overly influenced by personal bias, and alignment more difficult with imprecise data.

What marketing must establish is a way to engage all stakeholders in systematic, disciplined and quantifiable processes that drive convergence and alignment horizontally and vertically across the enterprise. The process work products must be measurable in absolute terms and provide real-time decision support. Finally, marketing processes must be continually improved (re-engineered) and robust enough to resist unwarranted changes, yet flexible enough to adapt quickly when necessary.

Marketing process engineering is not taught in business school. Most marketing executives pay little attention to the crucial responsibility of process creation. This is where the experience of On-Fire Associates can help.

Read about one crucial workflow that many marketing teams struggle to perform.