• by Aaron Baar , October 7, 2009

Despite increased measurement systems and practices, only one-fourth of marketers believe they're managing marketing effectively, according to a new survey by market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and marketing consultancy CMG Partners.

"There's been a lot of interest in marketing measurement in recent years, but not a lot of companies have figured out how to turn that into increased business results," Mark Carr, a partner with CMG Partners tells Marketing Daily. "It's a process that's easier said than done, and although there have been great advances in recent years in the science of marketing and measurement, it's still a tricky and sustained process that takes the full buy-in of the entire organization, not just the marketing department."

According to the survey of more than 400 companies across a variety of industries and of varying sizes, while 75% of marketers are interested in measuring the performance of their marketing initiatives, only 24% believe they are improving business results based on marketing measurement insights. Even fewer believe they excel at measuring the performance of their marketing initiatives.

According to the survey, some of the most common barriers within companies are a lack of buy-in to marketing measurement on a senior level and a failure to align marketing metrics and improvement with a company's strategic objectives.

"The goal is to have an increased return on marketing investment whether that's increased revenue or increased bottom line, or it could translate into savings," Carr says. "There is sometimes a bit of a downward spiral that organizations can get into, where senior management doesn't buy into the marketing performance management."

However, there were some best practices among companies that have been employing better marketing performance management, Carr says. Among them: developing senior-level acceptance and desire for it, aligning marketing performance with overall corporate objectives, integrating insights gleaned from measurement into broader business processes and utilizing the marketing metrics for greater alignment with other departments.

"Improving marketing efforts means going beyond measurements to the overall management philosophy," Carr says. "You have to translate better insights into better decisions going forward, and that's the trickier task."