I’m struck by an observation this week from Alison Hanrahan, Head of Marketing Performance at HSBC:
“As marketers we have to be careful not to settle for campaign metrics … we have to push for business outcomes.”
As marketing has grown more siloed and specialized over the years, marketing activities are too often decoupled from business impact. There’s no shortage of metrics, but are they metrics that really matter? Are they metrics that can be understood across the organization?
Nowhere is this disconnect more prevalent than in social media marketing, where results can be nebulous and detached from business outcomes.
I like how Burger King CMO Fernando Machado once put it:
“Not all campaigns will do everything, but they should be doing something in the direction of the objectives you have.”
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
