Marketing ROI: The Least Advised (but Most Obvious) Factor

Here is a challenge. Search Google for articles giving advice on how to improve return on investment (ROI) for your marketing programs--use Google Instant of course! Not surprisingly, hundreds of articles can be readily found. Now list out the core recommendations of the first 20 articles you find. Or, just take my word for it. I get the following basic themes:

1. Target better--quite obviously, if you get the most relevant message to the most relevant seeker, you will get better results.
2. Track better–-also obvious, if you understand what does well and what does not, stop what doesn’t work in favor of what does, you will do better.
3. Provide relevant messages and promote better–-self-explanatory.
4. Plan better–-touted by many consultant types who love to insist your marketing is really doomed from the start by faulty planning.
   
5. Build a relationship–-easy to understand and hard to execute, but certainly having a relationship with a prospect gets you further down the road than having to re-introduce yourself every time you need a sale.
6. Price your products better–-again fairly 101 advice, but valuable nevertheless.
7. Make sure your marketing, post-marketing, fulfillment and customer service align to maximize sales efforts–-pretty valuable advice, which is often poorly executed by most companies.

Like the claim that Shakespeare has written all the world’s stories, most of the advice you find seem to be variations on the above themes. Re-targeting, buying via demand-side platforms, location-based marketing all fall under “target better” and probably also under “provide relevant messages” and maybe “build a relationship.” Promotions, segmentation, social marketing, customer relationship management, one-to-one marketing, 360 marketing--they are all ways to improve one or more of the above factors.

It almost seems as if the world has forgotten about one fundamental factor of ROI.

Cost.

As in reducing your marketing cost. Not just by targeting better, tracking better, planning better and developing relationships, but by arriving at a lower cost structure altogether. This leads to increased strategic flexibility and operational efficiency. And today, the best opportunity to do so lies in understanding and leveraging the global economy.