10 Clues You Have a Marketing ROI Culture

I’m a big believer in marketing ROI. Every marketing dollar should have an anticipated revenue and margin return — and that should actually be written down somewhere, measured and evaluated. In fact, I believe this sort of activity has to become part of the culture.

I would not assert there is an easy step 1-2-3 to building a marketing ROI culture, but I would suggest there are certain characteristics and behaviors that are evidence of a metrics-oriented marketing culture.

Here are some thoughts – 10 to be exact – of what a marketing ROI culture might look like:

1. At most marketing meetings there is a calculator present.
   

2. Finance and marketing know each other well enough now to go out to lunch…at least once in a while!
   

3. You have (or need) a focused marketing operations analyst (data reporting and analysis)
   

4. You have a marketing dashboard reporting daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly marketing results vs. forecast
   

5. This dashboard (and source data) is available to anyone, anytime — and is presented to management at least weekly.
   

6. The numbers on this dashboard include P&L-relevant measures (revenue, expense, margin) — not just clicks, calls, leads, etc.
   

7. The marketing department’s shared drive stores many Excel spreadsheets – perhaps more Excel files than Powerpoint presentations or Acrobat pdfs combined!
   

8. The executive summary of any marketing presentation is 60% numbers. The remaining is 80% numbers and graphs.
   

9. Senior management understands and recalls the actual and forecasted marketing measures (i.e. response rates, conversion, revenue per circ, total marketing revenue, etc.)
   

10. You start performance planning and reviews in Microsoft Excel before you use Microsoft Word.