At Quaero we are often asked to help marketing organizations that feel like they are “inefficient”. Sometimes what I find is that they are, in fact, fairly efficient, but that their marketing investments are not “effective”. In other words they execute well but do not get good outcomes. By the same token, I work with companies who are effective – they get good marketing results – but who collectively tear their hair out every time they work together on a marketing program because they are so inefficient and it’s therefore so hard to get things done.
Conceptually the difference between efficiency and effectiveness is pretty easy to get your arms around. Efficiency means you run lean and execute well. Effectiveness means you get good results in the right areas. However the ingredients to success for both are many. In this piece I wanted to provide some guidelines for assessing the “efficiency” of your marketing operation. They key is to break it down into those key ingredients or characteristics which will give you a good read on the efficiency of your overall capabilities, especially your processes. Some of those characteristics are:
- There is an effective gating process for new work
- Effort is generally focused where it is most needed
- People are empowered to work quickly and with an appropriate level of inspection and oversight (not too much, not too little)
- Work is consistently tackled in a sequence which reflects the highest business priorities
- Re-work and unnecessary hand-offs are minimized
- Clear and non-redundant communication is the norm
- Maximum use is made of available automation
- Quality results are consistently produced
- Effort is proportional to complexity or novelty of work (simple or business-as-usual work can be “fast-tracked”)
- The process is continuously improving
If you rate yourself in each of these areas (or better yet work with an objective third party to do an assessment), you will quickly form an accurate picture of how efficient you are. That can then pave the way for smart decisions and investments which can help you to cut cost and re-focus wasted resources on the most productive marketing opportunities. Companies which tackle marketing inefficiency often find they can shift effort away from manual or labor-intensive activities to more productive and important tasks such as analyzing data to understand customer behavior and planning more effective marketing programs.
