Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing Illustrations by Laura Beckman How to Start Improving Collaboration, Executive Visibility, and Team Performance
Operational Analytics for Integrated Marketing
Illustrations by Laura Beckman
How to Start Improving Collaboration,
Executive Visibility, and Team Performance
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.
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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
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
marketing organization.
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
marketing organization.
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
marketing organization.
Here is your roadmap to a more collaborative, highly-efficient marketing organization.
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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
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