Marketing constantly struggles on two fronts. On the one hand, it is the task of marketing to build and maintain relationships with potential and existing customers. On the other hand, marketing in your company must repeatedly acquire the necessary budgets and prove that they are required and used correctly. Marketing budgets are usually the first thing to be checked for cost savings in the company.
Therefore, marketing managers must repeatedly prove to their management that their marketing campaigns are helpful for the company. The problem: Many marketing managers frequently carry out the same actions. If success does not materialize, the budget increases according to the motto: A lot helps a lot.
It is risky. Because those responsible for advertising now know that a lot of advertising can also hurt, and the effectiveness of the advertising deteriorates considerably. It is precisely for this reason that You must uncover cause-and-effect relationships in marketing to identify the levers that have an effect and with which You can achieve the marketing goals. The central questions are: Have the proper marketing measures been selected and implemented correctly? What does marketing contribute to the company’s success? To answer these questions, those responsible have to do marketing control.
Align All Marketing Activities with Corporate Goals Using Marketing-Controlling
Ultimately, companies are primarily concerned with increasing their turnover and value. Accordingly, all marketing activities must be geared towards the following overarching corporate goals.
- Sales of products and services are to be increased.
- Brand awareness (product or company) should be maintained or improved.
- Customer loyalty and customer value are to be increased.
- The company’s profit should be increased.
- New products are to be quickly established on the market.
- The company should grow through new markets and new customers.
- You should improve the company’s image.
Marketing has to deal with three central areas of responsibility to achieve these goals.
You can assign all marketing tasks to
- Market research, market analysis, and customer analysis
- Sales and sales support through the levers of product design, product price, sales channel, and communication (advertising, etc.).
- Brand building and brand maintenance
Marketing goals are formulated in all three areas of responsibility. You determine what marketing wants to achieve. The building must be aligned with the corporate objectives and coordinated with them. At the same time, the first task is about providing the company and product management, sales, and research and development with information about the market and customers. The other mission is about selling products and services.
Marketing controlling is a part of marketing that shows how marketing achieves the marketing goals and contributes to the company’s goals.
Tip: Marketing Tasks
You can find out in detail what the tasks of market research, market analysis, and customer analysis include in the manual chapters on market analysis and customer analysis.
Recognize chains of effects in marketing and use marketing budgets correctly.
If a company places an advertisement and sales increase shortly afterward, this can be one cause and the other effect. But you seldom can you demonstrate the impact of marketing so easily – many other factors can often play a role. When in doubt, it is a coincidence that sales increased and advertising did nothing. It is complicated for marketing controlling to judge correctly.
For example, sales may have increased because
- The economic situation of customers has improved,
- The season for the product has started.
- An article has appeared in the press that reports positively about the company,
- A significant competitor has delivery problems,
- Customers preferred to buy based on the advertisement but sold less than usual later.
An advertisement may not work because
- Competitors run (better) advertising at the same time,
- The ad is poorly done,
- The advertisement is placed incorrectly, and the target group is not reached with the selected medium,
- The advertising works, but only much later; Customers perceive the advertising and save it, but only have a specific need later.
This way, you can make many assumptions and hypotheses to describe and prove advertising effects and cause-effect chains. For each marketing campaign, marketing controlling must check which influencing factors are possible and how it can measure or control them. You will find some examples of this in the following sections of this manual chapter.
Then, you can describe an impact chain like the following
Enhancing Product Planning, Pricing, Distribution, and Communication through strategic employment of marketing tools influences critical marketing metrics, including customer satisfaction, loyalty, product quality, brand reputation, perceived value, corporate image, and employee commitment. These factors drive sales, profitability, and overall company valuation.
Understanding these interconnected effects enables businesses to allocate marketing budgets judiciously, optimizing the profitability of marketing initiatives. Figure 1 illustrates the impact chains of advertising campaigns and underscores how various Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can illuminate these relationships. Ultimately, allocating resources in the marketing budget contributes to the company’s revenue generation, signifying a crucial input-output dynamic.
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