Recently, I sat down with Lynne Jarman Johnson, CMO of Consumers Credit Union and podcast host of Money I’m Home to chat about everything from technology, to return on marketing investment, to business strategies, to financial advice.
Click the play button below and listen as we discuss how to change your marketing from overhead to value-add.
Are you tracking where your marketing dollars are going and what they are doing for you? And even more importantly, can you prove, with data, that your marketing efforts directly resulted in new revenue?
Over the years, I’ve managed many marketing budgets of all different sizes and levels of complexity. And there would always come a day where every line item would be called into question.
Often, people would say something like, “We need to make some cuts and decrease overhead. That includes marketing and you don’t need all of this money,” or “Well, you had this much money in your budget last year, so that should suffice again for this year.”
To make it worse, marketing budgets seemed to always be among the first ones to get cut. This drove me crazy!
There’s an old quote by John Wanamaker that says, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half.” But this is no longer true. For every dollar that you put into modern marketing, you should be able to see the dollars that are coming out.
With the increase in technology and tracking, marketing should no longer be considered as overhead, because it is a (proven) value-add. Now, digital marketing and the marketing process can be tracked and attached to sales opportunities. And when those opportunities close, you really should be able to prove a return on marketing investment. If you’re not tracking it, it’s time to start!
Click the play button below to check out this 16-minute podcast and learn how you can gain a return on your marketing investment, how technology impacts that, and other business insights and tips.
How are you tracking your marketing dollars? Are your marketing dollars going towards things that will impact your business?