9% of Marketers are doing their job. What?

I just reviewed the 2007 MARKETING ROI AND MEASUREMENTS STUDY
(Lenskold Group & MarketingProfs Benchmark Report).

In a survey of 759 respondents, when asked to rank their ability to measure the financial returns (ROI) generated across all forms of marketing, 9% of those surveyed as either “a source of real leadership” or “as good as it needs to be”.

WOW. That means 91% are struggling? What the...?

There are a couple of different ways you could look at these statistics.

• The 7% that are "As good as it needs to be" are probably in the most trouble if they get comfortable and cease to innovate. As one of my mentors would say - "If it ain't broke, break it."


• The 91% who suck at their job are making the 9% of us look better.


• The 51% who are "a long way from where it could be" are the ones with the biggest opportunity to make a difference. The farther off base your marketing programs are from where they should be, the more immediate impact and value your company will realize.


• The 40% group "somewhat short of where it could be" is the toughest group to be in. You are providing enough value and justification to keep your job, but you can never quite get around to closing the loop and being able to pull true ROI reports.

I would love to see the details broken down by industry to see the differences between product companies and service providers. With products you have reams of data and all that is required to generate ROI metrics is some common sense and leveraging technology.

In the services business however, sales data is put into the system by busy salespeople who aren't terribly concerned about some of the detailed info that would help a marketer achieve marketing ROI reporting capability. It is an ongoing challenge and something I grapple with daily. Some days I feel like my marketing programs are "a source of real leadership" and other days I fear that we're in with the dreaded 40% group. I don't think you would ever hear me say a marketing effort was "as good as it needs to be". It always needs to be better.

How would you categorize your ability to measure ROI across your entire marketing organization?