How can D365 Marketing and Mint help marketing prove its impact?
One of the stickiest chief marketing officer (CMO) pain points is proving the value and impact of marketing initiatives and campaigns. This is reflected in heaps of statistics and research – Gartner found that 89% of surveyed marketing leaders felt that they needed to evolve their existing capabilities to produce more measurable results; McKinsey revealed that almost 80% of CEOs want marketing leaders to drive revenue growth, and Oracle’s survey put ‘proving marketing attribution and ROI’ as one of the top challenges facing marketers in 2022.
In short, the CMO is under pressure to prove performance against budgets and has to do so in ways that are measurable, relevant and tangible.
There are several hurdles that marketers have to overcome in order to ensure that they prove their return on investment (ROI) to the c-suite and retain their grip on budgets that are shrinking at the same speed that economic complexity and uncertainty are growing.
The first hurdle: Defining ROI
A recent report ‘How Today’s CMO can Leverage ROI to Prove Growth’ found that 47% of marketers can’t calculate ROI effectively and which is a challenge when around 96% of organizations use ROI as a key metric in proving the value of marketing. That said, the survey also pointed out that most companies can’t agree on how that ROI should be measured, defined or implemented.
The second hurdle: Measuring ROI effectively
The ability to fully unpack the data around the effectiveness and reach of a marketing campaign is invaluable. Marketers need this data to understand how well a campaign works, the impact it has on customers, the value it delivers, and so much more. The ability to track ROI across multiple campaigns, types of content, and touchpoints throughout the omnichannel is fast becoming a critical competitive advantage. The problem is – how?
The third hurdle: Access to data
On the flip side of the data coin is access to relevant and reliable data. Marketing teams are often drowning in lakes of data that have been created from customers and campaigns, but they lack the tools that will help them to dig deep into that data and pull out insights that matter. Data-driven decision-making requires high-quality data, and that’s not an easy ask.
The fourth hurdle: Creating a ROI ecosystem
It’s pretty obvious that technology is the solution to many CMO problems. After all, McKinsey says that technology capable of learning at scale will help marketers get that all-important grip on their data and on their marketing strategies. Gartner points out that marketing teams are desperate for in-house resources that will help them to improve marketing data and analytics (26%) and wanted to invest into marketing technology (22%). And PwC says that it’s technology that remains a ‘structural enabler’ for successful marketing teams. But what technology? Which platform? What solution?
Leap the hurdles with the agility of an athlete
Yes, technology is the answer. It will definitively improve the quality of the data squeezed out of the vast volumes available to marketing teams. Technology is also capable of sourcing and analyzing the data to create accessible insights that provide CMOs with what they need to define their measurements of ROI and present these to the board.
The right technology is the athletic advantage here, and this is where Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing steps up to the plate. With its functionality, feature set, and proven global footprint, this technology is designed to support CMOs in proving the value of their marketing efforts and managing their data effectively. And Mint has the expertise and the toolkits to ensure that it is implemented properly so that CMOs don’t just leap the hurdles, they walk straight past them.