Marketing should achieve the marketing goals with advertising, promotions, and other marketing campaigns. Marketing controlling is responsible for checking the effects of marketing campaigns and improving marketing. For this purpose, marketing controlling defines critical figures to recognize whether marketing budgets are being used effectively.
Marketing Controlling
Marketing control serves to ensure the success of marketing. Marketing Controlling measures whether a marketing activity achieves the marketing goals and whether the cost-benefit ratio is correct. Using suitable vital figures shows the effects of marketing activities, impact chains, and opportunities for improvement in marketing. It also provides information for strategic marketing planning.
Other terms for marketing control are “marketing accountability,” “marketing performance,” or “return on marketing.”
Marketing Controlling Dimensions
What marketing does for the company can be divided into three dimensions:
- Effectiveness: contribution of marketing to achieve company goals
- Efficiency: Relationship between marketing impact and marketing costs to use the marketing budget in the best feasible way
- Adaptability: Marketing responsiveness to changes in customers, in the market, and among competitors
The extent to which marketing contributes to achieving corporate goals can be booked on the benefit side of marketing. However, this requires an appropriate marketing budget because marketing activities are associated with expenses. As the person responsible for marketing or marketing, you must check to what extent your marketing (benefits) achieves your company goals, whether the budget is invested correctly, and whether the costs are reasonable (effort).
You must also understand which factors are critical to achieving the goals and the desired impact. The effects can change continuously due to competitors and evolving customer expectations. Marketing must recognize such changes and adapt to them.
Task and Functions of Marketing Controlling
Even if measuring the impact of marketing campaigns precisely or determining them in advance is complicated, marketing controlling still has an essential purpose in the company. It demands marketing goal orientation. It can make practical and less effective levers visible. It supports the continuous adaptation and optimization of marketing campaigns and helps allocate marketing budgets.
To do this, Marketing Controlling must perform these tasks and functions in particular:
Control Function
The central task of marketing control is to ensure that the elements in the chain of effects interlock. It must warn if the chain threatens to break. This is the control function of marketing controlling.
Information Function
To fulfill the control function in marketing control and ensure that the chain of effects does not break, key figures show this for a single marketing campaign and all activities. This is the information function of marketing control.
Planning Function
Marketing control is integral to marketing planning and improving individual marketing campaigns. So, it also has a planning function.
Note the Side Effects of Marketing
Marketing success should not only be evaluated in terms of customer, sales, and turnover. Instead, different stakeholders play a role. In addition to the customers, dealers, market partners, investors, suppliers, and employees. Advertising, public relations, or customer relations management not only helps with sales but also strengthens relationships with investors and promotes the corporate image when it comes to finding qualified employees (employer branding).
Clarify Corporate Goals
Compile the essential corporate goals and corporate strategies.
- What do you want to achieve with your company?
- What is particularly important to you when it comes to the development of your company?
- Which goals are in the foreground in the current year?
Derive Marketing Goals
Then check your marketing goals:
- Which marketing goals can be derived from the corporate goals?
- What do you want to achieve overall with individual marketing activities?
- Check to what extent your marketing goals match the company goals: What should you adjust and coordinate better?
Assign all previous marketing campaigns to the marketing goals. Then, link marketing goals and business goals.
Define Marketing Controlling Requirements
If you know which marketing goals you are pursuing and what you want to achieve with marketing as a whole and with individual marketing campaigns, then the requirements for marketing control the result. Clarify:
- What exactly are you doing in terms of marketing control?
- What has been determined, measured, checked, or evaluated with marketing controlling?
- What metrics do you use to review your marketing activities?
- To what extent do these indicators show whether and how you can achieve the marketing goals?
- Where do you see deficits?
Then, check to what extent you want to improve your marketing control. You will find suitable methods and procedures for this in the following sections of this manual chapter. In the first step, a distinction is made between strategic and operational tasks and critical figures for marketing control.
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