Marketing Performance

9 — IT solutions: Use marketing ROI decision support solutions to transform your company

Why do IT solutions matter?

Give someone a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach someone how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime. Moses Maimonides, the Jewish philosopher, coined this saying almost a thousand years ago in reference to acts of charity, but it is no less applicable to corporate conduct today. Sure, you can buy a fish, but why not buy a fishing rod instead? As a marketing executive, you can pay a specialist to optimize your mix of instruments and budget allocation, employing the methods and tools outlined in the preceding chapters. Nothing wrong with that. But the impact of any such effort will be restricted to a few budgetary cycles at best. Things change, people move on to new roles, and knowledge is lost. Little by little, gut feeling and rules of thumb creep back in. Then what? Hire another service provider to set things straight again? Not a great idea for a number of reasons. You will be sacrificing marketing ROI between rounds of optimization. You will create the impression that you need constant outside help to do your job. You will be wasting money on service providers that you should be spending to build your brand. The CFO will have a field day dishing the dirt on you. You don't need any of that.

An integrated marketing ROI solution will not only help you stay in control. It also buys you time. Manual data gathering, integration, and analysis take forever. ...