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Many
businesses will soon begin the process of planning their marketing
programs and budgets for 2007. To help chief marketing officers
and their directors prepare for this exercise, it makes sense to
conduct an annual assessment of the marketing organization's strengths
and weaknesses before allocating dollars. An audit and assessment
of the people, processes and plans will identify gaps and risks
in your organization so you can fix them.
What is a marketing assessment?
A thorough marketing assessment produces information that helps
senior managers evaluate their current marketing organization in
order to make better strategic and tactical decisions. In addition,
a marketing assessment helps educate or update staff about external
audiences, competitors, trends, and other drivers affecting profitability,
customer loyalty, and market growth. An assessment is also an effective
means of providing senior executives, particularly a newly-hired
CMO or VP of Marketing, with the information needed to analyze and
rate their staff's marketing abilities.
Three areas covered in a typical marketing assessment include the
product lifecycle (e.g. the creation of MRDs, PRDs), integrated
demand creation (e.g. the execution of multi-faceted demand
generation activities), and market intelligence gathering
(e.g. the process and tools used to collect and internally communicate
market- and product-requirements and data).
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Product Lifecycle |
Integrated Demand Creation |
Market Intelligence Gathering |
| Planning |
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| Processes |
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| People |
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The best place to start is with your own self assessment. Grade
your organization's effectiveness in each quadrant shown in this
table. How would you assess the health of your organization along
these dimensions?
- Planning: Your ability to effectively plan strategies
and tactics for each of these areas,
- Processes: A hard look at the methods and tasks used
to create, gain approval, execute, and analyze results in each
program area, and
- People: An assessment of the skill sets residing in your
staff and their abilities.
Your self-assessment is a good first step. Next you need a more
comprehensive audit; however, your marketing managers don't have
time to conduct as thorough an analysis as is needed, and they are
likely to be biased in the outcome. The quickest and best way to
complete a thorough and unbiased audit and assessment is to hire
a trusted marketing expert to lead the process. Although the details
and focus of each marketing assessment will be unique to that business,
the following paragraphs provide a generic overview of what to expect.
Product Lifecycle: Review your product positioning and lifecycle
strategies
What processes are in place to create, review, and approve marketing
requirements documents (MRDs) and product requirements documents
(PRDs)? Who is tasked with the responsibility of positioning your
products? How coordinated are your alpha and beta programs?
The marketing assessor will investigate the differences between
stated product lifecycle processes and reality. Product marketing,
product management, and development teams each play a role; and,
they can sometimes be at odds. A marketing assessor can identify
road blocks and dissimilar expectations and recommend tighter cohesion
between these teams. In order to most effectively manage the product
lifecycle (from development through obsolescence), your marketing
team must have the right people with the right skill sets, the right
processes, and the right plans. A marketing assessment will help
you sort out each of these areas.
Integrated Demand Creation: Evaluate marcom campaigns and programs
Are you executing multi-faceted programs that encourage your prospects
and customers to engage in an ongoing dialog? Or, are you executing
a series of isolated, independent marketing activities?
Your marketing promotions should be strategic, targeted, and cost-effective
based on industry response standards and your organization's historic
response rates. Feedback from your customers can help you determine
the communication channels of most interest to individual members.
The marketing assessor will help you determine if you are utilizing
the most effective range of promotional channels and tactics and
not relying too heavily on just one or two formats, such as email
or events.
Market Intelligence Gathering: Collect and share market data
How well do you understand the issues driving your customers' businesses?
Do you have a process for systematically collecting and communicating
market data and knowledge internally? A marketing assessment looks
at who collects this data and how it is used (or not) internally
in the development of the MRD, PRD, and demand generation campaigns.
The marketing assessor will interview a variety of staff members
to identify the current level of available market intelligence.
They can determine what, if any, statistically rigorous market research
exists on the interests, needs, perceptions, opinions, and expectations
of your customers, prospects, and other supporters or stakeholders.
Information may be gathered from customer visits, product focus
groups, customer advisory boards, sales reps, analyst interviews,
etc. The assessor will also take a look at how your company houses
and shares this information. This repository can be your greatest
asset - or worst albatross. Most of the time, this information is
only captured in individual's heads or their hard drives. Without
a repository, you are at risk of losing this valuable corporate
information when they leave the company.
Mike Gospe (mikeg@kickstartall.com)
is one of the founding members of the KickStart Alliance. The KickStart
Alliance (www.kickstartall.com)
is a team of senior marketing and sales leaders who assist startups
and emerging companies develop and execute a variety of marketing
and sales goals and objectives.
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