Purpose Before Process:

The Marketing ROI Cheat Code of 2020

Custom content for Quad by Marketing Dive's Brand Studio

of activity with new digital marketing channels and analytics

platforms that sometimes outnumber full-time staff5 — none of

these efforts get to the heart of the problem.

The problem is not shrinking budgets. Shrinking budgets simply

reveal that most organizations have built their marketing strategy

on an inherently inefficient foundation. The only way to overcome

the limitations placed on the marketing arm of an organization

is to release efficiency from its conceptual constraints as a

resource problem and reframe it as an overarching problem — to

trace processes, methods of data collection, and innovative efforts

back to the top of an organization and inject efficiency into the very

root of them.

t’s nothing less than a modern miracle that companies have

more channels than ever before to connect with customers

in and outside of a physical store.1 It’s led researchers at

leading firms such as McKinsey & Company,2 Deloitte,3 and Pew

Research4 to adjust their consumer-decision journey, agreeing that

today’s complex online landscape and digitally savvy customer

requires a multi-faceted approach to marketing.

Today’s customers have more access to information and

opportunities to buy. But this proliferation of opportunity has

also fragmented their path to purchase in a way that makes it

incredibly difficult for marketers to influence their behavior or

to prove that influence. As a result, many marketing teams are

scrambling to account for the appearance of diminishing ROI

and struggling to meet the demands of more customers on more

marketing channels with the same or fewer resources than

they had before.

Quad partnered with Marketing Dive to survey 141 marketing

executives on their approach to different marketing initiatives

this year and next. The results echoed this pressure marketers

experience to deliver more sophisticated and provocative

marketing campaigns with fewer full-time staff members

or paid media budgets. But while most marketers are

turning to different strategies to improve their ROI

and be more effective — which explains the burst

I2

One area in which

organizations are naturally

seeking out efficiency is in

the way they organize their

marketing teams. Across the

board, survey respondents

indicated that marketing

initiatives are overwhelmingly

implemented by in-house

teams, especially...

80%Marketing strategy development

67%Data insights and analytics

71% Content workflow

Companies are most likely to work with

an outside agency for...

41%

media deployment

39%

creative development27%

customer insights and

analytics

But everyday efficiencies have the best

potential to help marketers overcome

their biggest reported obstacles of

being challenged to...

63%

do more with less

46%

work within reduced budgets

37%

overcome process inefficiencies

Efficiency As Purpose First3

ost marketing teams already

try to work as efficiently as

possible. But inherent efficiency

extends beyond maximizing productivity

or cutting costs, to rebuilding the way an

organization functions. It places efficient

thinking at the core of your functional and

cultural DNA so that the quality extends

into everything you do, from allocating

resources to campaigns to deciding which

campaigns to pursue in the first place. Only

when you know that every activity has a

purpose can you plan and use resources so

strategically that there’s no excess, giving

your company the flexibility it needs to be

profitable in an exacting market.

In pursuit of strategic efficiency, you’ll

eventually consider how to make your

processes, approach to marketing data,

and innovation more efficient. But the

first step starts much higher in your

organization than resource planning — it

starts with aligning your company’s

mission, values, and organizing principles

to marketing efforts.

M

There’s a chasm between where and when consumers want to see brand activity and how agile those brands can be to meet those needs. Marketers are constrained by all-too-common communication silos and bureaucratic processes, yes. But the bigger problem is that there’s no integration between the marketing and the brand’s ultimate vision.”

Peter Deubler, Executive Director of Business Process Strategy at Quad

“

4

sk most marketing executives

about alignment and you’re

sure to hear perfectly scripted

lip service about the importance of

aligning marketing initiatives with the

organization’s vision of success. However,

in reality, few organizations ever stop

to consider how marketing efforts align

with the rest of the organization such

as sales, company values, or strategic

business goals.

A

Efficiency as a Source of Organizational Alignment

5

This phenomenon is supported in the survey results, where 75% of respondents rate aligning marketing initiatives with strategic business goals as their highest priority this year and 62% indicate it will increase in priority next year. It’s also interesting to note that marketing strategy development is overwhelmingly in-house (80%) and overwhelmingly likely to stay the same next year (79%), which could indicate a desire to maintain ownership of marketing strategy in an effort to maintain alignment with business goals.

Alignment is the first building block in

doing more with less because it’s your

organization’s first step in prioritizing

resources. And as experts at McKinsey

& Company point out, when your

organization’s overall objectives are clear,

you have more time available to focus

on doing the thing rather than deciding

what to do.6

Here are three steps you can take

to build strategic alignment into your

marketing initiatives:

6

Aligning marketing initiatives with strategic

business goals

75%

Scaling marketing initiatives

Driving initial purchases

Predicting and adapting to changes in consumer content and marketing

consumption

Driving repeat purchases

42%

36% 36%37%

Reaching new customers online

72%

Coordinating online and offline marketing

initiatives

41%

Reaching new customers offline

40%

Getting customer feedback

41%

As challenging as it can be, you must choose

a single marketing objective that can also be

linked to your company’s strategic business

goals. This will provide the basis for drawing

out “pillars” or building blocks of your

approach to marketing, as well as strategies,

tactics, and execution.

“A true corporate strategy will be tied to

the marketing objectives, which are then

tied to strategies, tactics, and execution,”

says Jesse Blount, Vice President of Client

Marketing Strategy at Quad. “You should

be able to map this out on paper to see

that there are many different things you

do, but they all do one thing: move your

strategic business goal forward.”

IDENTIFY YOUR TEAMS’ SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT MARKETING OBJECTIVE

01 Percentage of respondents that identified the following objectives as important to their business

7

With a single business objective in mind,

gather your customer-facing touchpoints

for the past quarter and see what kind of

picture it paints. Do your efforts align behind

any one objective? Or are they tangential,

supporting new products, newsworthy

events, or other passing trends?

“When building alignment, the first thing

I would ask a client is how their current

program aligns to their company’s strategic

business goals,” says Blount.

COLLECT AND ANALYZE CUSTOMER-FACING TOUCHPOINTS

02Does what your customers see align with your company vision? For example, if you’re a national hardware chain and your vision is to be the go-to place for contractors in the U.S., does what you’re putting out on television and in inserts talk about being the best for contractors, or are you diluting the message by talking to consumers?”

Jesse Blount, Vice President, Client Marketing Strategy at Quad

“8

You show what you value by what you

measure. As you update your strategy

to focus on specific strategic business

goals, you also need to update what you

measure to align with that focus. Whatever

documents you use to plan, execute, or

evaluate your marketing work should map

back to your overall strategic goals.

“All too often, the daily creative a team

produces is not tied to or evaluated in

relation to the company vision. Their

reporting documents say nothing about

company vision,” says Blount. “Instead,

they’re making adjustments based on

measurements like cost per click or lead

acquisition, or timing a promotion to a

holiday schedule. But this skews your

message and undermines alignment.”

MEASURE OUTPUT THAT ALIGNS WITH YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY

03Their reporting documents say nothing about company vision. Instead, they’re making adjustments based on measurements like cost per click or lead acquisition, or timing a promotion to a holiday schedule. But this skews your message and undermines alignments.”

Jesse Blount, Vice President, Client Marketing Strategy at Quad

“9

When your organization has built

efficiency into its strategy down to the

studs, you can move on to the next step:

deploying your resources well when it

comes to process, data, and innovation.

WHEN YOUR COMPANY IS ALIGNED WITH EFFICIENCY, YOU CAN...

Far too many organizations start with their

technology stack and work backward to

build processes. The result is a web of

processes that are out-of-step with strategic

Build Processes That Strengthen Your Organization Over Time 1 alignment efforts. If your organization

doesn’t stop to capture the efficiencies

available within your processes, your

strategic alignment will weaken over time.

For example, one conversation marketing

teams need to have is making the change

from a channel-first mentality to a content-

People, process, and technology are critical components of everyday efficiency, but the order gets turned around sometimes. You can’t start with the technology. You have to get your process right for the enterprise, then you can attach technology to it, and then can you bring the people in.”

Jesse Blount, Vice President, Client Marketing Strategy at Quad

“

first mentality. First consider the content

you need to promote and how it aligns with

your strategic plan, and then consider how

it suits the particular marketing channel

you’re using. That shift puts your brand

and the customer at the center of the

conversation and helps your team avoid

making each channel a siloed process.

10

With every new marketing channel comes

an opportunity to collect data, both about

your target customer and about how the

channel performs in regard to attribution.

But while most marketing teams have

wholeheartedly embraced data in theory,

few have the time or resources they need

to follow through on using data to inform

their strategy and tactics — a significant

mismatch considering 65% of survey

respondents indicated that reaching

new customers online would increase in

priority next year.

Bring Your Marketing Data to Life2 A critical component of building everyday

efficiencies around data is identifying a

seamless, user-friendly way to measure

and collect customer insights as you go

so you can evaluate and course-correct

your marketing in real time. This is in stark

contrast to what is actually happening within

organizations where, in one study, marketers

report using six or more tools to collect

performance data, including their customer

relationship management solution (CRM),

and 39% expect to use an average of six or

more tools over the next two years.7 Another

study found that while 51% of marketers

surveyed are carrying out attribution on

most or all of their campaigns, 70% don’t act

on those insights in any way.8

11

You need to be able to close in on the data that matters to your marketing team and see the context of that data within the bigger picture — otherwise your data represents an enormous missed opportunity for streamlining and optimizing your marketing efforts.”

Peter Deubler, Executive Director of Business Process Strategy at Quad

“

“You need to be able to close in on the

data that matters to your marketing

team and see the context of that data

within the bigger picture — otherwise

your data represents an enormous

missed opportunity for streamlining

and optimizing your marketing efforts,”

says Peter Deubler, Executive Director of

Business Process Strategy at Quad. “For

example, giving leadership the ability to

review current and seasonal campaigns in

hindsight can be very powerful in enabling

your organization to course-correct later

in the season or for the next season. As

you continue to develop your marketing

alignment, you can use those insights to

influence your strategic pillars, strategies,

and tactics so your marketing results

remain fully aligned with your strategic

business goals.”

12

Brands today feel more pressure to put

the best, most innovative creative possible

into the world to stand out in a saturated

environment, and that explains why

the marketing initiative that the lowest

percentage of survey respondents “Did not

invest in” goes to creative development

(1%) and marketing strategy development

(3%). More than ever before, brands want

to avoid falling into what Marc Prichard,

P&G’s Chief Brand Officer, calls the

“content crap trap,” or massive amounts of

unfocused branded content.9

While innovation and everyday efficiencies

might appear to live on opposite ends

of the creativity spectrum, innovation

Deliver Practical, On-Point Innovation3 researchers assert that the greatest levels

of creativity and innovation demand

structure, order, and routine.10 The work

you do to establish everyday efficiencies

in alignment, process, and data, is actually

the work that gives your creative talent

the room they need to be creative in a

practical way.

“Innovation without strategy is just

noise. It doesn’t help you engage your

customer or build a connected customer

experience,” says Blount. “When you

innovate beneath strategy — when you do

the things we’re talking about here and

build a strategy, align your process, and

utilize your data — by nature you should

be stepping out of the box and doing

something different and creative that

brings your brand front-and-center to

your customers.”

When you innovate beneath strategy  by nature, you should be stepping out of the box and doing something different and creative that brings your brand front-and-center to your customers.”

Jesse Blount, Vice President,Client Marketing Strategy at Quad

“

13

n today’s competitive marketing

environment, brands are falling over

themselves to appeal to customers

on hundreds of different purchase

channels. You simply can’t afford to waste

any of your time, talent, or resources on

inefficient or outdated processes. Strategic

Everyday Efficiencies to Achieve Your Business’s Fullest Potential

I efficiency offers any organization the

opportunity to align its marketing efforts

to truly strategic business goals, revamp

processes to support those efforts, deploy

data deliberately, and achieve optimal

levels of creativity and innovation. But the

key to actually following through on these

efficiencies is to connect with a partner that

truly understands your business and has

a proven process to apply to your current

approach to marketing — a partner that

can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you to

implement these recommendations and help

you fully realize your organization’s potential.

14

Sources1 “The Age of Continuous Connection,” The Harvard Business

Review, https://hbr.org/2019/05/the-age-of-continuous-

connection

2 “Ten years on the consumer decision journey,” McKinsey &

Company, https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-

mckinsey-blog/ten-years-on-the-consumer-decision-journey-

where-are-we-today

3 “The Deloitte Consumer Review, CX marks the spot: Rethinking

the consumer experience to win,” Deloitte, https://www.

deloittedigital.com/us/en/offerings/customer-led-marketing/

advertising--marketing-and-commerce.html

4 “Online Shopping and E-Commerce,” Pew Research Institute,

https://www.pewinternet.org/2016/12/19/online-shopping-and-

e-commerce/

5  “CMOs Spend More on Technology Than Talent,” Gartner,

https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/cmos-

spend-more-on-technology-than-talent

6 “The Aligned Organization,” McKinsey & Company, https://www.

mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/the-

aligned-organization

7  “Survey: Most Marketers Use 6+ Measurement Tools But

Don’t Trust the Data,” Convince & Convert, https://www.

convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/most-marketers-

dont-trust-data/

8 “Study: 70% of Marketers Don’t Know What To Do with

Attribution Insights,” LSA Insider, https://www.lsainsider.com/

study-70-of-marketers-dont-know-what-to-do-with-attribution-

insights/archives

9 “How Doing Less Saves More,” Quad, https://www.quad.com/

resources/how-doing-less-saves-more/

10 “Creativity is not enough,” The Harvard Business Review, https://

hbr.org/2002/08/creativity-is-not-enough

Quad is a worldwide marketing solutions partner with a strong print

foundation, dedicated to creating a better way for its clients through

a data-driven, integrated platform. Quad’s unmatched scale, deep

marketing knowledge coupled with executional expertise helps

companies reduce complexity, increase efficiencies and enhance

marketing spend effectiveness. We work with clients in many vertical

industries including retail, publishing, financial services, insurance

and health care. Visit Quad.com to learn more.

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