Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing€¦ · Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing Illustrations by aura Beckman ... A focus on operational efficiency can improve

Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing

Illustrations by Laura Beckman

How to Start Improving Collaboration,

Executive Visibility, and Team Performance

https://newscred.com

Introduction

Measuring and optimizing operational efficiency can have a big impact on the success of your marketing program. Learning the ways to benchmark operational efficiency can benefit marketers, regardless of seniority level or marketing discipline.

At NewsCred, we’re predicting that leaders who build

collaborative, cross-functional marketing teams will deliver

better customer experiences and business results. This guide is

for marketing executives and leaders who want to build a more

accountable, more collaborative, and higher-performing team.

You’ll learn:

1. The Why: Measuring operational efficiency should be a

fundamental part of every marketing organization and it can

help build a higher-performing, more integrated team.

2. The What: Defining the key metrics of operational efficiency

in a marketing organization and the tools for measuring them.

3. The How: Start benchmarking operational efficiency and

defining what success looks like at your organization.

insights.newscred.comOperational Analytics for Integrated Marketing insights.newscred.comOperational Analytics for Integrated Marketing

Why now?

of project failures are

related to ineffective

communication

Project Management Institute

33%

5-19%value improvement seen by marketing

organizations via better integration

processes and benchmarking

R3 Integration 40

70%of the top performing B2B marketers rate

their workflows as excellent or very good,

compared to 14% of the least successful

CMI

65%of the content that marketing teams

produce is wasted

SiriusDecisions


The case for operational efficiency

How operational efficiency drives better performance

The goal of operational efficiency measurement is NOT to stifle creativity or make your marketers feel like Big Brother is watching (and holding a stopwatch). On the contrary: operational efficiency should ultimately help marketing leaders better understand where their teams’ time is being spent and how to give back marketing time for creativity by improving administrative and process weaknesses.

+ Lack of visibility into the ROI of your marketing organization

+ Historic processes that are misaligned with current strategies

+ Executive misperceptions about the economies of scale in production

+ Imbalanced marketing resource and workload allocations

+ Friction in content planning, development, or distribution

+ Low rates of marketing asset utilization and repurposing

Operational efficiency and integrated marketing go hand in hand.

A key point is that operational

efficiency and integrated marketing

go hand in hand. By taking steps

to improve efficiency metrics,

you’re going to be inherently

improving collaboration and

integration within your marketing

organization. Operational efficiency

is all about fixing misaligned

processes and bottlenecks so that

all teams are clearly aligned and

moving forward together.

Why focus on integrated marketing?

67 percent of CMOs believe that the

ability to drive cross-organizational

growth to improve customer

centricity is of paramount importance

for this year. Integrated marketing is

the vehicle for a truly omnichannel

customer experience.

And integrated marketing is proven

to deliver better ROI. A Gartner study

found that integrated campaigns

(using 3 or more channels) outperform

traditional campaigns by 300 percent.

This is why NewsCred believes that

content marketing will increasingly

become a more integrated function,

requiring cross-team collaboration. Our

campaigns need to be omnichannel and

deliver consistent brand experiences

regardless of touchpoint.

As you bring teams together to deliver

an omnichannel content experience,

operational efficiency helps measure

the productivity of those integrated

teams. Benchmarking the productivity

and results of your integrated teams helps

you understand the exact business

impact of your integrated strategy.

What challenges can measuring operational efficiency help solve?

Operational efficiency measurement boils down to quantifying how effectively your

marketing teams are producing content given the time, effort, and resources expended.

Marketing content could be brand assets, digital ad units, content marketing (articles,

podcasts, infographics, mobile games, you name it), press releases, or even customer

support FAQs. For every team that is developing content within the marketing

organization, there is an opportunity to measure and improve efficiency.

Are you having challenges with any of these areas, particularly a lack of visibility,

content waste, or resourcing issues? A focus on operational efficiency can improve

many of these very common concerns for marketing teams at enterprise brands.


Let’s dive into the metrics your teams should be tracking and the insights you can draw from them. Measuring your operational efficiency is all about being able to see the relationship between three different metrics.

Key definitions for operational efficiency

Tracks all of the resources

needed to execute marketing

initiatives and assets.

AKA: “What went into our

marketing efforts?”

Determine how efficiently

resources are being used

by tracking the progress

of each process stage

and overall usage of

completed assets.

AKA: “What was actually

produced and utilized?”

Measures the results of

marketing initiatives to

ensure the efficiency gains

are having a positive impact

on the business.

AKA: “Did we achieve

our goals?”

Input

Output

Performance

Operational efficiency is NOT about doing

more with less resources. Of course that’s

often a core goal for the C-suite, but it requires

much more than just efficiency — for that,

you need high-quality planning, data, and

execution alongside optimized processes. The

goal of operational efficiency benchmarks goes

back to spending less time on production or

bottlenecked processes without sacrificing

any performance output, along with increasing

visibility of where resources are being used.

In the top scenario, it’s likely your organization

is new to integrated marketing and content

operations. In this case, your goals should be

to try and achieve the same marketing output

with significantly less resources. Once that’s

documented, the next step is to increase

performance with the same resources.

More mature marketing organizations tend to

focus on maintaining resources but producing

more output and better results (the bottom

scenario in the chart above). This is where

tightening a few bolts on existing processes

can often create enough impact that teams

can increase productivity with the same

resources and see a positive impact on results.

Input

Output

Performance

Reduce resources...

to produce same output...

while maintaining results.

Maintain resources...

to produce more output...

while increasing results.

AND

This is why operational efficiency is just one

point on a maturity curve towards highly

integrated marketing performance. Efficiency

is all about the ability to use resources

effectively and drive every last possible ounce

of value from them. Mastering these metrics

and improving upon your benchmarks is

one dimension of building a truly integrated

marketing organization.

You can learn more about the Integrated

Marketing Maturity Index in our ebook:

Building an Integrated Marketing Organization.

At the highest level, there are two potential outcomes for your more operationally efficient marketing organization:


https://get.newscred.com/the-integrated-marketing-organization/

How to start measuring operational efficiency

Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals, let’s dive into how your teams can actually put this into practice. The very first step is documenting all your input, output, and performance metrics.

Input

Output

Performance

Avg. Time to Produce Each Asset

Avg. Time to Complete Production Stage

Avg. Steps to Produce an Asset

Hours Per User

Active Campaigns

Assets Created vs Assets Published

% of Assets Completed On Time

Avg. Additional Steps in Asset Production

% of Assets Tracking to On Time Finish

% of Assets Used Across LOBs + Markets

Page Views

Engagement Rate

Conversion Rate

Leads Generated

Revenue Attribution

Here are the areas your input metrics may cover:

+ The amount of time it takes to complete

each individual piece of content.

+ The time it takes to complete each

production stage within a content

workflow. This includes answering how

long content is spending with legal or

SMEs for approvals.

+ The number of steps you need to go

through to produce marketing content; Is

it going through multiple legal revisions or

multiple rounds of editing and rewrites?

+ The number of hours that your teams are

spending on each asset, with the ultimate

goal of putting a dollar figure not just on

each asset but also on each individual

stage of production.

+ The number of active campaigns able to

utilize each asset. This is a proxy for

how integrated and cross-functional

your planning and asset reutilization

processes are.

Output metrics should be answering:

+ How much content was actually published

(versus started)?

+ How much of the content was completed

on time?

+ How many additional steps, over & above the

plan, did each asset take? How much time is

going over & above what you planned?

+ What percentage of assets are being used

across multiple markets or lines of business?

All performance metrics will be unique to your

strategy, but it’s important to get as close as

possible to the performance of each individual

asset relative to the bottom line. Try to

attribute the leads, revenue, and engagement

for each asset because it enables you to

quantify the success of resource allocations.


Building KPIs for operational efficiency

With your metrics defined, the next step is setting solid KPIs for each metric. These should be specific to your business goals and organization, so use these recommendations as inspiration. Notice that the goal is never to pit teams against each other in terms of productivity or efficiency, but rather to ensure there’s a laser focus on overall process improvements.

InputMetric KPI

Avg. Time to Complete

Each Asset

Reduce avg. completion time

by 10% in program Q1

Avg. Time to Complete

Production Stage

Reduce avg. completion time for

bottleneck stages by program Q2

Avg. Steps Required

to Complete Asset

Reduce steps taken to complete

each task month on month to hit

target of 6 steps with 2 revisions

Hours Per User Reduce hours per user by 10% in Q1

Active Campaigns Increase active campaigns

Output

Performance

Metric KPI

Assets Created vs

Assets PublishedIncrease % of assets published vs created

% of Assets

Completed On TimeIncrease page views per article QoQ

Avg. Additional Steps

to Produce Asset

Reduce additional stages needed in

each workflow by 25% QoQ

% of Assets On Track to

Complete On Time

Hit rolling weekly target of 80% of

assets on track at all times

Avg. Delay Reduce average delay by 20% QoQ

Metric KPI

Channel Breakdown

by Asset

Increase average channels each

asset appears in by 10%

Engagement Rate Maintain an engagement rate of 40%

Revenue Attribution Increase attributed revenue by 10%

Conversion RateMaintain conversion to

demo request at 2.5%

% Assets in

Multiple Workflows

Increase the amount of content being

used by multiple business lines


What is the current state?

+ How long is our production cycle?

+ What are the current sticking points

or road blocks?

+ What stages are causing the

most pain?

+ What is taking too long?

+ What is being repeated?

+ Where are efforts being doubled?

What should we be aiming for?

+ How long should each stage take?

+ How many revisions should each

piece of content go through?

+ How many steps should we need

to go through?

+ How long do we need for legal approval?

+ How many stakeholders should be

involved in each stage?

+ Where do we need to spend the

most time?

Benchmarking operational efficiency

This is the really fun part.

Benchmarking is what gives you a sense of progress

and validates all your change driver efforts within

the organization. Benchmarking operational

efficiency growth gives you the tools to show off

how much more your teams are able to produce with

their resources.

You’ll want to measure operational performance

against two things:

1. How far these integration efforts have taken the

marketing organization since the project began.

2. Your performance against your ideal state.

The first data point shows the ROI of your efforts to

date. The second benchmark ensures you have your

eyes on a prize.

Brief Write/create Strategy review Stakeholder review Publish

From here, build out documented best practice

plans and workflows that contain ideal targets

for process and production. You should end up

with guidelines such as, “Each video asset should

need three rounds of script revisions, two legal

revisions, and four storyboard updates.” Your revised

workflows should take these recommendations and

translate them into repeatable steps.

Workflows are a marketer’s friend.Workflows are one of the most underutilized components

of marketing operations. A workflow is a predetermined

process path specific to each asset creation task.

Established workflows can be a key factor in the success

of operational efficiency improvements.

PRO -TIP

There is no industry standard for operational

efficiency within a marketing organization — and,

again, the goal is not to stifle any creative efforts —

so, set this ideal state benchmark by working back

from an ROI goal and based on gains you think are

reasonable. In the boxes below are the questions

you should try to answer with data benchmarks.

Benchmarking is a fundamental step in the process

that allows you to build up the picture of the here

and now, alongside the ideal future state that you

want to get to. It’s the process of collecting all of the

data you have, and then turning that into a tangible,

documented KPI set.


Operational efficiency and the marketing stack

No discussion of operational efficiency is complete without covering the martech stack.

Having an integrated technology stack is what

allows marketing leaders to benchmark effectively

and track content utilization metrics across teams.

Visibility and centralization are the key elements to a

successful operational efficiency strategy.

Technology should be used to ensure you can build

out, enforce, and govern the workflows laid out in

your best practice documentation. It should take

away any manual reporting processes associated

with your KPIs, and it should give a clear line of sight

into operational activities.

A measurement framework will help you align

operational efficiency KPIs with technology

dependencies. Any gaps in the framework’s

measurement capabilities should be addressed

as quickly as possible.

Metric KPI Technology

Input

Avg. Time to Complete Each Asset

Avg. Time to Complete Each Step

Avg. Steps to Produce Each Asset

Hours Per User

Active Campaigns

Output

Assets Created vs Assets Published

% Assets Completed on Time

Any Additional Steps to Produce Asset

% Assets on Track to Complete On Time

Avg. Delay

Performance

% Assets in Multiple Workflows

Engagement Rate

Leads Generated

Conversion Rate

Channel Breakdown by Asset

Build operational analytics into your reporting cadence.

Don’t stop at producing

benchmarks. Once you have

your benchmarks identified, the

next step is to establish regular

reporting. A best practice is to

include operational analytics

in all marketing campaign

reporting. For example, when

reporting on campaign

progress, include metrics like

content produced vs. strategic

targets, on-time performance

of workflows, and average time

spent on workflows by asset type.

PRO -TIP

Here’s a sample of what a measurement framework looks like, with the tech dependency layered onto your core metrics.


Now that we’ve looked at what you need to be

measuring and how to realistically start building a

reporting structure, let’s look ahead at how all of this

fits into the large goal of building a more integrated


NewsCred created the Integrated Marketing

Maturity Curve to help visualize a blueprint for

marketing org success. It contains eight key

milestones for integrated marketing maturity.

Operational efficiency is not a milestone on this

curve, rather, it exists alongside the integrated

What comes next? The impact of operational efficiency on your business

marketing maturity curve. As your organization

moves upward on the Integrated Marketing Maturity

Curve, you will see your operational efficiency

increasing as well.

The journey will feature plateaus and periods of

acceleration — as you integrate additional teams

into your processes, there may be periods where

efficiency stagnates. Don’t let that deter you from

pressing ahead and driving new collaboration

opportunities. As you onboard more teams, it

ultimately becomes easier to drive efficiency, reuse

assets, and increase cross-functional productivity.

Executive mandate

Collaborative planning

Documented taxonomy

Holistic workflows

Integrated technology stack

Empowered governance

Asset utilization

Execution at scale

1 2 3

4

5

6

7

8Operational

EfficiencyIntegrated Marketing Maturity Curve

Key takeaways

1. Measuring operational efficiency is a central

component of building a more effective integrated


2. There are three buckets of operational efficiency

metrics: input, output, and performance.

3. Begin by building a measurement framework for

operational efficiency that includes KPIs, then align

with technology dependencies.

4. Create ideal state and starting position benchmarks

to track progress.

5. Document learnings and build them into best

practice documents and workflows.

6. Build operational analytics into your marketing

campaign reporting.

7. Continue bringing in additional teams with the goal

of a fully aligned, highly collaborative, integrated


Here is your roadmap to a more collaborative, highly-efficient marketing organization.


Stuart leads NewsCred’s analytics center of

excellence, ensuring that content programs are

measuring and optimizing against the correct KPIs.

Stuart comes from a creative agency background and

has led strategy for both B2B and B2C brands.

Stuart Russell

Digital Marketing Strategist,

NewsCred

About the author

newscred.com | insights.newscred.com | @newscred | (212) 989 4100

insights.newscred.comOperational Analytics for Integrated Marketing

http://newscred.com

https://insights.newscred.com

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Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing€¦ · Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing Illustrations by aura Beckman ... A focus on operational efficiency can improve