Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing

Transcription

1 Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing How to Start Improving Collaboration, Executive Visibility, and Team Performance Illustrations by Laura Beckman

2 Introduction Measuring and optimizing operational efficiency can have a big impact on the success of your marketing program. Learning the ways to benchmark operational efficiency can benefit marketers, regardless of seniority level or marketing discipline. At NewsCred, we re predicting that leaders who build collaborative, cross-functional marketing teams will deliver better customer experiences and business results. This guide is for marketing executives and leaders who want to build a more accountable, more collaborative, and higher-performing team. You ll learn: 1. The Why: Measuring operational efficiency should be a fundamental part of every marketing organization and it can help build a higher-performing, more integrated team. 2. The What: Defining the key metrics of operational efficiency in a marketing organization and the tools for measuring them. 3. The How: Start benchmarking operational efficiency and defining what success looks like at your organization.

3 Why now? 65 % of the content that marketing teams 5-19 % value improvement seen by marketing organizations via better integration processes and benchmarking R3 Integration 40 produce is wasted SiriusDecisions 33 % 70 % of the top performing B2B marketers rate their workflows as excellent or very good, compared to 14% of the least successful CMI of project failures are related to ineffective communication Project Management Institute

4 The case for operational efficiency How operational efficiency drives better performance Operational efficiency measurement boils down to quantifying how effectively your marketing teams are producing content given the time, effort, and resources expended. Marketing content could be brand assets, digital ad units, content marketing (articles, podcasts, infographics, mobile games, you name it), press releases, or even customer support FAQs. For every team that is developing content within the marketing organization, there is an opportunity to measure and improve efficiency. Operational efficiency and integrated marketing go hand in hand. A key point is that operational efficiency and integrated marketing go hand in hand. By taking steps to improve efficiency metrics, you re going to be inherently improving collaboration and integration within your marketing traditional campaigns by 300 percent. This is why NewsCred believes that content marketing will increasingly become a more integrated function, requiring cross-team collaboration. Our campaigns need to be omnichannel and deliver consistent brand experiences What challenges can measuring operational efficiency help solve? organization. Operational efficiency regardless of touchpoint. + + Lack of visibility into the ROI of your marketing organization is all about fixing misaligned processes and bottlenecks so that As you bring teams together to deliver + + Historic processes that are misaligned with current strategies all teams are clearly aligned and an omnichannel content experience, + + Executive misperceptions about the economies of scale in production + + Imbalanced marketing resource and workload allocations + + Friction in content planning, development, or distribution moving forward together. Why focus on integrated marketing? 67 percent of CMOs believe that the operational efficiency helps measure the productivity of those integrated teams. Benchmarking the productivity and results of your integrated teams helps + + Low rates of marketing asset utilization and repurposing ability to drive cross-organizational growth to improve customer you understand the exact business impact of your integrated strategy. Are you having challenges with any of these areas, particularly a lack of visibility, centricity is of paramount importance content waste, or resourcing issues? A focus on operational efficiency can improve for this year. Integrated marketing is many of these very common concerns for marketing teams at enterprise brands. the vehicle for a truly omnichannel customer experience. The goal of operational efficiency measurement is NOT to stifle creativity or make your marketers feel like Big Brother is watching (and holding a stopwatch). On the contrary: operational efficiency should ultimately help marketing leaders better understand where their teams time is being spent and how to give back marketing time for creativity by improving administrative and process weaknesses. And integrated marketing is proven to deliver better ROI. A Gartner study found that integrated campaigns (using 3 or more channels) outperform

5 Key definitions for operational efficiency Let s dive into the metrics your teams should be tracking and the insights you can draw from them. Measuring your operational efficiency is all about being able to see the relationship between three different metrics. Operational efficiency is NOT about doing more with less resources. Of course that s often a core goal for the C-suite, but it requires much more than just efficiency for that, you need high-quality planning, data, and execution alongside optimized processes. The goal of operational efficiency benchmarks goes back to spending less time on production or bottlenecked processes without sacrificing any performance output, along with increasing visibility of where resources are being used. At the highest level, there are two potential outcomes for your more operationally efficient marketing organization: Input Output Performance Reduce resources... to produce same output... while maintaining results. AND Maintain resources... to produce more output... while increasing results. Input Output Performance Tracks all of the resources needed to execute marketing initiatives and assets. AKA: What went into our marketing efforts? Determine how efficiently resources are being used by tracking the progress of each process stage and overall usage of completed assets. AKA: What was actually produced and utilized? Measures the results of marketing initiatives to ensure the efficiency gains are having a positive impact on the business. AKA: Did we achieve our goals? In the top scenario, it s likely your organization is new to integrated marketing and content operations. In this case, your goals should be to try and achieve the same marketing output with significantly less resources. Once that s documented, the next step is to increase performance with the same resources. More mature marketing organizations tend to focus on maintaining resources but producing more output and better results (the bottom scenario in the chart above). This is where tightening a few bolts on existing processes can often create enough impact that teams can increase productivity with the same resources and see a positive impact on results. This is why operational efficiency is just one point on a maturity curve towards highly integrated marketing performance. Efficiency is all about the ability to use resources effectively and drive every last possible ounce of value from them. Mastering these metrics and improving upon your benchmarks is one dimension of building a truly integrated marketing organization. You can learn more about the Integrated Marketing Maturity Index in our ebook: Building an Integrated Marketing Organization.

6 How to start measuring operational efficiency Now that we ve covered the fundamentals, let s dive into how your teams can actually put this into practice. The very first step is documenting all your input, output, and performance metrics. Input Output Performance Here are the areas your input metrics may cover: + + The amount of time it takes to complete each individual piece of content. + + The time it takes to complete each production stage within a content workflow. This includes answering how long content is spending with legal or SMEs for approvals. + + The number of steps you need to go through to produce marketing content; Is it going through multiple legal revisions or multiple rounds of editing and rewrites? Output metrics should be answering: + + How much content was actually published (versus started)? + + How much of the content was completed on time? + + How many additional steps, over & above the plan, did each asset take? How much time is going over & above what you planned? + + What percentage of assets are being used across multiple markets or lines of business? Avg. Time to Produce Each Asset Assets Created vs Assets Published Page Views + + The number of hours that your teams are All performance metrics will be unique to your Avg. Time to Complete Production Stage % of Assets Completed On Time Engagement Rate spending on each asset, with the ultimate goal of putting a dollar figure not just on strategy, but it s important to get as close as possible to the performance of each individual Avg. Steps to Produce an Asset Avg. Additional Steps in Asset Production Conversion Rate each asset but also on each individual stage of production. asset relative to the bottom line. Try to attribute the leads, revenue, and engagement Hours Per User % of Assets Tracking to On Time Finish Leads Generated + + The number of active campaigns able to for each asset because it enables you to quantify the success of resource allocations. Active Campaigns % of Assets Used Across LOBs + Markets Revenue Attribution utilize each asset. This is a proxy for how integrated and cross-functional your planning and asset reutilization processes are.

7 Building KPIs for operational efficiency Metric KPI With your metrics defined, the next step is setting solid KPIs for each metric. These should be specific to your business goals and organization, so use these recommendations as inspiration. Notice that the goal is never to pit teams against each other in terms of productivity or efficiency, but rather to ensure there s a laser focus on overall process improvements. Output Assets Created vs Assets Published % of Assets Completed On Time Avg. Additional Steps to Produce Asset Increase % of assets published vs created Increase page views per article QoQ Reduce additional stages needed in each workflow by 25% QoQ % of Assets On Track to Complete On Time Hit rolling weekly target of 80% of assets on track at all times Avg. Delay Reduce average delay by 20% QoQ Input Metric KPI Performance Metric KPI Avg. Time to Complete Each Asset Reduce avg. completion time by 10% in program Q1 Channel Breakdown by Asset Increase average channels each asset appears in by 10% Avg. Time to Complete Production Stage Reduce avg. completion time for bottleneck stages by program Q2 Engagement Rate Maintain an engagement rate of 40% Avg. Steps Required to Complete Asset Reduce steps taken to complete each task month on month to hit target of 6 steps with 2 revisions Revenue Attribution Increase attributed revenue by 10% Conversion Rate Maintain conversion to demo request at 2.5% Hours Per User Reduce hours per user by 10% in Q1 Active Campaigns Increase active campaigns % Assets in Multiple Workflows Increase the amount of content being used by multiple business lines

8 Benchmarking operational efficiency This is the really fun part. Benchmarking is what gives you a sense of progress and validates all your change driver efforts within the organization. Benchmarking operational efficiency growth gives you the tools to show off how much more your teams are able to produce with their resources. You ll want to measure operational performance against two things: 1. How far these integration efforts have taken the marketing organization since the project began. 2. Your performance against your ideal state. There is no industry standard for operational efficiency within a marketing organization and, again, the goal is not to stifle any creative efforts so, set this ideal state benchmark by working back from an ROI goal and based on gains you think are reasonable. In the boxes below are the questions you should try to answer with data benchmarks. Benchmarking is a fundamental step in the process that allows you to build up the picture of the here and now, alongside the ideal future state that you want to get to. It s the process of collecting all of the data you have, and then turning that into a tangible, documented KPI set. From here, build out documented best practice plans and workflows that contain ideal targets for process and production. You should end up with guidelines such as, Each video asset should need three rounds of script revisions, two legal revisions, and four storyboard updates. Your revised workflows should take these recommendations and translate them into repeatable steps. Brief Write/create Strategy review Stakeholder review Publish The first data point shows the ROI of your efforts to date. The second benchmark ensures you have your eyes on a prize. What is the current state? + + How long is our production cycle? + + What are the current sticking points or road blocks? + + What stages are causing the most pain? + + What is taking too long? + + What is being repeated? + + Where are efforts being doubled? What should we be aiming for? + + How long should each stage take? + + How many revisions should each piece of content go through? + + How many steps should we need to go through? + + How long do we need for legal approval? + + How many stakeholders should be involved in each stage? + + Where do we need to spend the most time? PRO-TIP Workflows are a marketer s friend. Workflows are one of the most underutilized components of marketing operations. A workflow is a predetermined process path specific to each asset creation task. Established workflows can be a key factor in the success of operational efficiency improvements.

9 Operational efficiency and the marketing stack PRO-TIP Build operational analytics into your reporting cadence. Don t stop at producing benchmarks. Once you have your benchmarks identified, the next step is to establish regular reporting. A best practice is to include operational analytics in all marketing campaign reporting. For example, when reporting on campaign progress, include metrics like content produced vs. strategic targets, on-time performance of workflows, and average time spent on workflows by asset type. No discussion of operational efficiency is complete without covering the martech stack. Having an integrated technology stack is what allows marketing leaders to benchmark effectively and track content utilization metrics across teams. Visibility and centralization are the key elements to a successful operational efficiency strategy. Technology should be used to ensure you can build out, enforce, and govern the workflows laid out in your best practice documentation. It should take away any manual reporting processes associated with your KPIs, and it should give a clear line of sight into operational activities. A measurement framework will help you align operational efficiency KPIs with technology dependencies. Any gaps in the framework s measurement capabilities should be addressed as quickly as possible. Here s a sample of what a measurement framework looks like, with the tech dependency layered onto your core metrics. Input Output Performance Metric KPI Technology Avg. Time to Complete Each Asset Avg. Time to Complete Each Step Avg. Steps to Produce Each Asset Hours Per User Active Campaigns Assets Created vs Assets Published % Assets Completed on Time Any Additional Steps to Produce Asset % Assets on Track to Complete On Time Avg. Delay % Assets in Multiple Workflows Engagement Rate Leads Generated Conversion Rate Channel Breakdown by Asset

10 What comes next? The impact of operational efficiency on your business Key takeaways Now that we ve looked at what you need to be measuring and how to realistically start building a reporting structure, let s look ahead at how all of this fits into the large goal of building a more integrated marketing organization. marketing maturity curve. As your organization moves upward on the Integrated Marketing Maturity Curve, you will see your operational efficiency increasing as well. The journey will feature plateaus and periods of Here is your roadmap to a more collaborative, highly-efficient marketing organization. 1. Measuring operational efficiency is a central component of building a more effective integrated marketing organization. 2. There are three buckets of operational efficiency metrics: input, output, and performance. NewsCred created the Integrated Marketing Maturity Curve to help visualize a blueprint for marketing org success. It contains eight key milestones for integrated marketing maturity. Operational efficiency is not a milestone on this acceleration as you integrate additional teams into your processes, there may be periods where efficiency stagnates. Don t let that deter you from pressing ahead and driving new collaboration opportunities. As you onboard more teams, it ultimately becomes easier to drive efficiency, reuse 3. Begin by building a measurement framework for operational efficiency that includes KPIs, then align with technology dependencies. 4. Create ideal state and starting position benchmarks to track progress. curve, rather, it exists alongside the integrated assets, and increase cross-functional productivity. 5. Document learnings and build them into best practice documents and workflows. 6. Build operational analytics into your marketing campaign reporting. Integrated Marketing Maturity Curve Operational Efficiency 7 8 Asset utilization Execution at scale 7. Continue bringing in additional teams with the goal of a fully aligned, highly collaborative, integrated marketing organization. 6 Empowered governance 5 4 Integrated technology stack 1 Executive mandate 2 Collaborative planning 3 Documented taxonomy Holistic workflows

11 About the author Stuart Russell Digital Marketing Strategist, NewsCred Stuart leads NewsCred s analytics center of excellence, ensuring that content programs are measuring and optimizing against the correct KPIs. Stuart comes from a creative agency background and has led strategy for both B2B and B2C brands. (212)