I've found myself thinking about yet another thought-provoking article from Mark Ritson - increasingly my go-to marketing guru (apart from all the fantastic marketers within White Marble, obviously). I find he writes about pertinent issues in a direct and pragmatic fashion, which is incredibly engaging. If you don't already follow him on LinkedIn I would recommend you do.
As a business, White Marble Consulting spend a lot of time trying to help clients develop marketing into a more powerful, data-driven function. ROI is therefore a regular topic of conversation.
Marketing teams across our industry are trying to find better ways of measuring their activities so that they can ultimately be linked to fund flows, ensuring marketing becomes a revenue-generator rather than a cost. All very sensible, and arguably necessary. Yet Mark raises some interesting points, which certainly apply to our industry.
What happens if your marketing campaigns, advertising, events, website and PR are all integrated and working perfectly, until:
- your star fund manager leaves;
- changing market conditions mean your products are underperforming; or
- macro developments continue to drive sentiment against you?
What are the other suitable and credible metrics to use for measuring performance? Take a look at some of the other points raised by Mark in the below article. While you may not agree with all of them, they certainly open your eyes to other possibilities beyond a focus on ROI.