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The best thought-out Marketing ROI can still leave you empty handed

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Jun 29 2009

I was talking to a senior client last week who heads up Global Customer Intelligence for  Fortune 50 company whose sales come mostly from other businesses, although they do have a substantial consumer business as well.    We were discussing the challenge of proving the Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI), particularly in this challenging environment.     He said he had gone to his CEO with a well planned business case for a revamp of their website, which does a fair amount of ecommerce but is also a showcase for their capabilities.  The CEO listened patiently to the pitch, bought into the ROI estimate but then said "Just one of our sales people can get me more revenues than this by working a little harder at one or two of our major accounts.  Why should I bother investing money in the web site when I can get a lot more bang for my buck elsewhere?" 

Good question.  Needless to say, our client got a pat on the back for putting together an impressive business case but got nary a dollar for his effort.  

So how does one deal with this problem?    In most B2B companies, which tend to be sales driven, marketing will have a hard time justifying business cases unless sales supports the case.   In the situation with our client, my counsel was to convince the Chief Sales Officer that his folks could serve their large accounts better if they had better intelligence on which individuals from within their accounts was visiting their website and what they were doing while they were there -  all information that a good web analytics tool and strategy can provide.    Then the response to the CEO's comment could be "well it will be easier for our sales teams to get more revenues from our clients if we knew what they were looking for when they visit our website and we nurture conversations with them using smart marketing tools to make the leads even warmer".    Support from the sales organization can go a long way toward convincing top management that it is worth investing in marketing initiatives, assuming that the support is forthcoming.   Of course, you need to make a judgement.   Is it easier to convince the CEO or the CSO?  Getting funding is often about knowing the players and understanding the dynamics, not just crunching numbers and displaying impressive logic. 

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