There’s almost a 99% guarantee that when you speak to the typical marketing expert, they wouldn’t be able to tell you what marketing accountability is. Maybe they’ll tell you something about ethics, or maybe something else. It isn’t anything against them, but maybe it shows their agency or company doesn’t implement such things.
Marketing accountability can be defined as so:
“The principle of being responsible for the outcomes of marketing activities and strategies”
Sounds simple enough, but for some, it’s something that is missed and then it leads to marketing efforts being misaligned with the end goals of an organization.
The entire theory is that the maturity of a marketing team can be gauged (genuinely) by examining its core accountability metrics.
Accountability Metrics in Less Mature Organizations
Metrics, metrics, and metrics. That’s all we talk about as marketers whether it be top of funnel metrics, marketing metrics, and now accountability metrics. Accountability metrics are as so:
Measurable Outcomes: Clear, quantifiable goals, and metrics that allow for the evaluation of all marketing initiatives. Such measurable outcomes would be ROI, CAC, lead generation numbers (SQLs and MQLs: Up to you), Conv. rates, and sales revenue attributed to the marketing efforts.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Use the data and the analytics available to inform marketing strategies and decisions. This would include collection and analyzing data from various marketing channels to understand what’s working and what isn’t. It should be obvious, but I’ll note that you should then make adjustments according to this data.
Alignment with Business Objectives: There should be a push to have marketing activities aligned with the overall goal of the business or organization. This would be things such as understanding and supporting broader business objectives such as revenue targets, market expansion, brand awareness, and our favorite: customer satisfaction.
Transparent Reporting: It should be a non-negotiable to report marketing performance not only internally, but to the client, stakeholders, or anyone else who needs to know. I would recommend including details such as what was achieved in comparison to what was planned out. This usually helps build trust and ensures everyone understands the implications of failing or succeeding with marketing.
Continuous Improvement: Any of the insights gathered from performance data can be used indefinitely to improve strategies. Accountability in the field is not just about the past performances being measured, but also about learning from it.
Financial Responsibility: Manage the freaking budget effectively and ensure funds are allocated in the best way possible to maximize ROI. The entire process involves justifying marketing spend by showing how it contributes to the financial success of the company.
Accountability Metrics in a More Mature Organization
Sourced Pipeline: Sourced pipeline refers to the opportunities or potential sales generated directly from the marketing efforts put forward. It tracks the journey from initial engagement (an ad) to the point where the lead becomes a SQL. This metric will shift focus from the quality of leads to the quantity and potential value of those same leads.
Revenue Attribution: This involves linking marketing activities directly to the revenue generation. It answers the question: “How much revenue did our marketing directly bring in?” Think about Be Uniic’s work with Bushwick Yacht Club. In the months of November and December of 2022, we accounted for 1/3rd of their total sales and increased sales by 54% MoM. Outside of just numbers, it helps identify which channels are most effective for driving sales, not just leads.
Alignment with Business Goals
At the end of the day, we have to think of the company's objective, and every company has the same objective: growth and profitability. So, both the sourced pipeline and revenue are closely tied to these fundamental goals. By focusing on the metrics, your marketing will align themselves with the financial objectives of the company.
The alignment will allow, or create, the guarantee that marketing strategies are not just creative or engaging, but are contributing tangibly to the bottom line.
Encouraging Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Collaboration between marketing and sales is a must, in our opinion, and these metrics will allow a closer collaboration between both teams. They foster a culture where marketing and sales jointly own the whole idea of revenue generation processes, ensuring for better communication and better shared goals.
Strategic Decision-Making
When you shift the focus onto sourced pipeline and revenue, marketing decisions become more strategic. That’s what we all want, right? Investments in marketing are then made based on their potential to drive revenue which leads to more efficient and effective uses of resources.
Long-Term Customer Value
Short-term gains aren’t good. They could be, but once again, in a short-term. Long-term customer relationships and value increase with the shift to these metrics. By understanding how both of these activities (really all activities) contribute to revenue, companies and organizations can tailor the efforts to attract and retain more valuable customers over time.
Assessing Marketing Maturity through Reporting Practices
Reporting is huge in understanding the role of marketing. We just talked about how we should have a keen understanding of how the marketing team correlates to overall revenue, but how do we get there? I would begin by asking questions such as:
What Metrics Are Tracked and Reported?: Are the metrics mainly on basic measures like traffic and leads, or do they include more advanced metrics such as CAC , CLV, and revenue attribution? Additionally, how are these metrics aligned with the overall objectives of the company?
How Is Marketing ROI Measured?: What methods are in place to calculate ROI for marketing campaigns? Does the company track and attribute revenue to specific activities?
Is There a Clear Link Between Marketing Activities and Sales Performance?: How does marketing demonstrate the impact of its efforts on sales pipeline and revenue? Are there mechanisms in place for tracking any and all leads throughout the sales funnel, from initial contact to closed sale?
How Frequently Is Marketing Performance Reported?: Are marketing reports generated monthly, quarterly, or annually, and why? Does the frequency of the reporting align with sales cycles and decision-making processes?
And there are a ton more, but we can just settle with these. Start there!
Indicators of a Mature Marketing Organization
To really understand the indicators of mature marketing, you’d have to understand three key aspects: the connection between marketing spend and sourced pipeline/revenue, ROI analysis, and baseline metrics for cost per leads.
Connection Between Marketing Spend and Sourced Pipeline/Revenue: Mature marketing involves precise tracking of how marketing spend influences the creation of a sourced pipeline and ultimately leads to revenue. This means using any form of advanced attribution models to link specific marketing activities and investments directly to sales outcomes.
There’s also a need for integrating the data from various platforms such as CRMs, marketing automation tools, and basic analytical platforms in order to provide a clear view of how ToFu activities translate into BoFu results. Ultimately, understanding all of the connections will allow you to make an allocation of marketing budgets. This will enable your team to invest more into high-return channels and activities that have demonstrated increased pipeline and revenue.
ROI Analysis by Channel, Campaign, and Cohort: Channel specific ROI requires a good ability to calculate the ROI of each of your marketing channels. It will involve assessing the effectiveness of various channels too in terms of their contribution to revenue. Outside of channels, we have to look at the campaign-level analysis too. This would be assessing each marketing campaign for its ROI.
One thing a ton of marketing departments, agencies, and individuals miss out on is the cohort analysis. This is when you examine the ROI of different customer segments to identify which one is yielding the greatest value over time.
Established Baselines for Cost Per Lead: Mature marketing involves establishing baselines for the “acceptable” CPL for each channel and campaign. Usually, the baseline is established and informed by historical data and market benchmarks. More importantly, the CPL is correlated with how effectively the leads convert into sales opportunities and contribute to the sales pipeline.
Based on the set baselines, the marketing will continuously be optimized. If a particular channel’s CPL is consistently higher than the established baseline without corresponding conversion rates, resources might be taken away from this channel and redirected to more effective channels.
The Need for Cultural Transformation in Less Mature Organizations
If your company hasn’t adopted any of these mature marketing metrics, then you’re just lagging behind. That’s putting it bluntly. You lose out on the process of reverse engineering too. Think about it: You want to generate revenue, and to reverse engineer, you have to think about how to get there. The answer is pipeline and sales.
This brings into the push, or more so the necessity, of a “cultural transformation” to occur in marketing departments. It will help shift revenue accountability from solely sales to both marketing and sales.
Takeaways:
At the end of the day, ask any company what their end goal is. If they say anything besides “revenue and growth,” they’re lying. In order to achieve these end goals (i.e., aligning our marketing with the end goal) we have to implement accountability metrics. Beyond this, we have to transition from an immature marketing agency’s accountability metrics and move to more mature metrics: Sourced Pipeline and Revenue Attribution.
Why is this all important? Because if your company, your organization, your department, whatever it is fails to implement not only the accountability metrics, but the mature accountability metrics, then it’s destined to fail. There’s no growth opportunity within the company, nor is there any possibility of your marketing department achieving (let alone aligning with) the end goals of revenue and growth.
