White Papers on
Marketing Management

Are Your Marketing Activities Worthwhile?

CMOs, marketing directors and marketing departments are under increasing pressure to justify their marketing activities. In an attempt to do so, they have turned to the "proven" technique of ROI. However, we are concerned that the actual ROI approach taken to justify activities may in fact make things worse. Rather than adopting piecemeal approaches from finance that might justify activities, we believe that marketers need to find a more use set of measurement disciplines. This paper looks at issues with using activity-based ROI and suggests a better approach.

Closed-Loop Marketing/Sales Systems

Pressure is increasing in most companies to align marketing and sales activities. At least those marketing activities focused on the support of near-term sales. Gaining alignment between these two organizations and their often disconnected activities can be a challenge. However, increased competitive pressure requires a solution. This paper looks at the expanding role of "operations management" in marketing and sales as a potential solution to this issue.

Does Your Company Need More Marketing, Or Just Better Marketing?

Improved marketing can solve many sales problems. Marketing presents a special problem for any company that has not yet developed a professionally staffed marketing department. This paper looks at the various marketing functions. It describes some successful approaches to determining when to add resources.

The Effective Management of the Marketing/Sales Process

The effective management of marketing/sales is and has been elusive to most companies. Getting your arms around all of the issues necessary to understand what is going on in marketing/sales and how to improve performance is a continual challenge. It can be like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. That doesn't mitigate the need to manage the process; it just makes for a lot of excuses as to why it's not done well.

How Much Should I Spend on Marketing?

In this increasingly competitive market, how much should a company spend on marketing? It depends what you mean by marketing. Since most people who ask that question are referring to the promotion side of marketing, let's focus there. We'll rephrase the question to "How much money should I spend on marketing promotion activities?" This paper provides useful insight to help you create your own real-world answer.

How To Maximize Your Marketing/Sales Investments

You are usually looking to increase sales. That's why you make investments in marketing and sales activities. So how can you optimize your marketing and sales investments in any economy? How can you improve the probability that your investments move from "gamble" to payback? This paper looks at a proven method to help you do just that.

Marketing & Sales Check-Ups

Medical insurers have found that the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) approach to health care has helped to reduce claim costs because it focuses on illness prevention. By implementing a policy of regularly scheduled health check-ups, the focus of both doctor and patient moves from curing illness to preventing it. All involved parties benefit. A useful product manufacturing process must be monitored for continuous improvement. The same is true in Customer Manufacturing. This paper explains how to get started.

Marketing Dashboards

Management dashboards are not likely the "silver bullet" often hoped for. Marketing dashboards are no different. Too many marketing dashboards are nothing more than graphical depictions of information that was obtainable, rather than a tool to help improve performance. However, it does not have to be that way. Marketing dashboards, like their peers' dashboards, can be useful tools to help manage the business process. You just have to start with the right end in mind.

Marketing's Job #1 is to Increase Sales

Many people believe that Marketing is really about lead generation or promotion or brand building. All of those things may be true, but they are activities. The real goal of Marketing is to increase sales, and there is one key result Marketing must produce to make that happen. This paper discusses that.

Marketing Mix Modeling

Marketing Mix Modeling has been around for some time. It is a staple in the business-to-consumer marketing arsenal (at least in larger companies). However, the techniques have not been applied by the business-to-business marketer for several reasons. All of which are no longer relevant. This paper introduces the concept of Marketing Mix Modeling and, while touching on business-to-consumer applications, focuses on how it can be applied to business-to-business markets, by large and mid-size companies alike.

Marketing & Sales Check-Ups

Medical insurers have found that the Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) approach to health care has helped to reduce claim costs because it focuses on illness prevention. By implementing a policy of regularly scheduled health check-ups, the focus of both doctor and patient moves from curing illness to preventing it. All involved parties benefit. A useful product manufacturing process must be monitored for continuous improvement. The same is true in Customer Manufacturing. This paper explains how to get started.

The Marketing & Sales Disconnect

The disconnect, some call it war, between marketing and sales is found whenever the two functions exist in a company, and at least one person works in each department. Periodically this issue raises its head and people consider its causes and symptoms. To the best of our knowledge this "problem" has existed for many decades and has shown no sign of remission despite many efforts to find a cure. Is that because sales is from Mars and marketing is from Venus, or perhaps it is just a "law of nature?" We think no on both counts. All prior solutions have been looking in the wrong place. We offer new direction, a map to the solution, and no charge for the map.

Marketing ROI

Marketing ROI is a topic of increasing interest. And it's about time. However, there are some things you have to get straight before you can have a useful discussion on the topic. This paper looks at Marketing ROI from a management perspective, and provides insights into this important metric.

Measuring Marketing Accurately

In today's world of marketing accountability, marketing performance management, marketing ROI and related catch phrases, measuring marketing is an oft-discussed topic in board rooms and C-suites. To measure marketing accurately requires first that you define what you expect marketing to accomplish. What outcome are you looking to achieve from the effort? As simple as that sounds, it is done too infrequently, which does not prevent the measurement discussion, though it precludes its usefulness.

The State of Competitive Advantage

Creating and maintaining a competitive advantage is a never-ending effort. And what it takes to accomplish that is ever-changing. As others have said, what you got you where you are today is not going to get you where you need to be tomorrow. This statement is provably true in terms of competitive advantage. This paper looks at the state of competitive advantage in the 21st century, and what companies will need to do to create and maintain a competitive advantage in today (and tomorrow's) frenetic markets.

Whose Forecast Is It Anyway?

Forecasting is a difficult subject to master. Over 20 years ago The Conference Board published some sage advice on forecasting, which included: "Forecast how much or when, but never both," "He who lives by the crystal ball learns to eat ground glass, " and "We're good at forecasting the past, it's the future that's hard." Sales forecasting is problematic in most companies. This paper considers a solution to improve the process.