Marketers lack alignment in metrics, finds IPA study

The study highlighted a need for all stakeholders to establish and agree upon marketing success measures from the outset. According to the research, while over half of client-side marketers ( 57%) say they make the relevant data accessible to the right people to inform planning, this perspective is not shared with their finance colleagues or agencies. For example, 72% of clients use customer data tracking, but fewer than half ( 46%) of the agencies studied say they have access to this.

Over 100 marketers and finance professionals and 120 agency leaders were surveyed for the IPA and ISBA study, carried out by Greengrass Consulting.

The study found that marketing still primarily focuses on short-term objectives and measures, with 73% of marketers agreeing that their short-term needs often take priority over longer term objectives ( 12 months ahead). Additionally, none of the finance professionals strongly agreed that they have longer-term marketing plans and objectives in place (one to three years).

Sixty-one per cent of marketers said they expect their marketing effectiveness cultures to increase by two points by 2020 – with over half of those surveyed rating their current marketing effectiveness cultures at six out of 10 or below (with 10 being ‘excellent’).

A quarter of respondents stated that marketing effectiveness is the responsibility of insights and analytics teams, while 22% said it is a ‘shared responsibility’ within the business. However, only 40% of marketers agreed their company is prioritising the right mix of resources to support marketing effectiveness.

Clare O’Brien, head of media effectiveness and performance, ISBA, said: "For ISBA’s Insight & Effectiveness Steering Group, [the research] addresses the question of how we develop stronger integral understanding of marketing-generated data throughout the business operation."

She added: "The numbers uncovered provide the evidence to develop shared responsibility across business teams for the collection and deployment of marketing data to better optimise all aspects of the business."