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Marketing Maturity Model - Part 3

by Sat Duggal

Measuring Go-to-Market Capabilities

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

Where an organization stands in terms of maturity can be determined by measuring overall marketing process linkage and five essential go-to-market capabilities: insights, market strategy, annual marketing planning, integrated marketing, and marketing performance metrics. Working with ANA (Association of National Advertisers), EMM has developed a methodology for both B2B and B2C companies that enables the characterization and measurement of the following:

  • The effectiveness of the processes that make up the essential go-to-market capabilities
  • Strengths and weaknesses in key processes and capabilities
  • The breakdowns that inhibit integration of these capabilities into a mature, smoothly running, and highly effective marketing organization
  • The maturity level both for individual capabilities and overall go-to-market capability

Further, in the course of assessing many leading companies, we have developed a database that enables us to benchmark an organization’s performance in each area—and performance overall—against other companies in the industry as well as against best practices across industries.

The following are just a few of the comprehensive set of considerations that go into the assessment of maturity in each key area:

1. Overall Process Linkage: Companies that rank higher in maturity tightly link individual steps in all marketing processes and across all five essential go-to-market capabilities. Typically, they employ a step-by-step marketing process that covers insights, brand strategy, marketing planning, and all of the executional areas (advertising, promotions, public relations, etc.) and marketing analysis. They use the outputs of a preceding marketing process as an input into the next downstream step. 

For example, insights feed brand positioning which links to annual planning which links to integrated campaign planning and then to communications development. Typically, such companies also have an enterprise IT solution that supports all the collaborative planning, knowledge management, and analytical aspects of marketing. In less mature companies, the individual steps within processes and across capabilities are not explicitly linked.

2.Insights: At the higher levels of maturity, people in marketing and other functions across the company, such as product development and sales, share a definition of an insight and follow a company-wide process for developing such insights. The process includes collecting relevant data, analyzing it, and generating and communicating insights. Processes and tools are in place to ensure that critical insights are leveraged throughout every aspect of marketing activities wherever possible.

For example, there is a process for connecting knowledge about the behavior of consumers, channels, and competitors to generate fundamental insights that explain their observed behavior. The knowledge base is continually updated with new knowledge and insights from recently conducted research and data analysis, and there are processes and tools in place for accessing and disseminating it.

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3. Marketing Strategy: High scorers in marketing strategy typically follow a company-recommended best practice process for developing marketing strategy that includes defining the target consumer/customer segment, brand positioning, key equities to own, and a strategic plan to meet marketing’s financial and brand equity goals. When developing a marketing strategy, leadership follows a company recommended template that describes such required elements as target consumer, brand promise, reason to believe, competitive marketing framework, and brand character.

The strategic goals in the plan, such as increasing penetration of a target consumer group or increasing purchase loyalty, are linked to the financial goals of the business in such a way that they can be monitored over time to ensure that the strategy is effectively delivering the financial goals. And these high performing organizations regularly explore new techniques in developing, understanding, or applying brand equity to help improve the metrics of the marketing strategy process itself.

4. Annual Planning: Best practices here include starting the planning activity by conducting a comprehensive situation assessment that reviews the performance of the prior year’s plan and external factors affecting the business. The planning process is designed to provide a specific opportunity for diverse functions in the company outside of marketing (finance, sales, operations, logistics, purchasing, merchandising, human resources, etc.) to contribute their perspectives on various issues prior to the development of the plan.

The completed plan includes not only financial goals but also brand equity goals, as well as consumer/channel goals like penetration, shareof-requirements, availability, and the like. And each specific marketing program or initiative in the annual plan formally and systematically links to the long-term goals in the strategic plan.

5. Marketing Performance Metrics: High performers here use a powerful and consistent metrics/analytics framework for analyzing marketing’s performance. To select those metrics and align various stakeholders, they have a robust metrics development process in which all major corporate functions participate. Data from marketing analytics is used comprehensively across the company, both to allocate funds among SBUs, geographies, and brands, as well as at a tactical level within individual brand plans.

Marketing campaigns and their tactical elements are measured both on their effectiveness (ability to sell volume) as well as their efficiency (volume per dollar of marketing spend).The marketing analytics capability is also used to enable sales forecasting and help set volume and share goals as well as allocate resources at the brand budget level. And there is a commonly agreed set of ‘dashboard’ metrics by which management and other functions measure the effectiveness of marketing’s activities. Through the direct assessment and measurement of marketing processes and capabilities, an accurate picture of marketing effectiveness emerges, unclouded by secondary measures or the common confusion of ends with means.

Targeting Improvement

The picture is not only accurate, it’s actionable: Armed with a comprehensive understanding of strengths and weaknesses in overall linkage of marketing processes and strengths and weaknesses across the five essential go-to-market capabilities, the organization is positioned to take the most important step of all: improvement.

Using the maturity model as a framework and the marketing assessment as a guide, organizations can build their go-to-market capabilities rapidly, shoring up weaknesses and capitalizing on strengths,with the aim of connecting all of the people and processes in support of a single flow of collaborative work. The result is a rigorous, but not rigid, end-to-end marketing process that doesn’t enforce change but inspires it.

There are a number of proven, effective ways to pursue improvement, depending on the nature of the weaknesses to be addressed and the organization’s preferred approach to change management. Closely and clearly aligning top leaders and having them cascade down new, more highly developed go-to-market processes and policies can be highly effective.

Alternatively, training and company-wide workshops designed to impart new ways of doing things and institutionalize them can facilitate rapid, widespread improvement. Or improvement can be targeted to critical areas, processes, and personnel. In any case, as you get a firmer handle on all of your processes, grow your capabilities, and move up the maturity scale, you can not only increase your return on marketing investment (ROMI) but better deliver on marketing’s most essential promise: to drive greater organic growth in the business.

Free Guide: Using Brand Promise to Achieve Marketing Excellence

Keywords: Go-To-Market, Custom Marketing Framework, Market and Data Analysis