Two-thirds of marketing spend wasted, says report

Some 65 per cent of all marketing spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers, according to The Fournaise Marketing Group's 2007 Global Marketing Effectiveness Report.

The organisation, a global leader in real-time marketing effectiveness tracking, questioned 3,000 marketers on a number of aspects of their role - from effectiveness of specific marketing channels, to how they track results and measure return on investment.

Estimated wastage rates varied from 45 per cent in business-to-business marketers through to 65 per cent for business-to-consumer, with figures highest in more developed economies such as the UK, US and Australia compared with developing economies like China and India.

To compound the problem, the report revealed that just one in ten of all marketers worldwide have automated systems in place to track effectiveness of their communication spending.

Of the 55 per cent of marketers that even track the results of their spending at all, 80 per cent do so manually, spending hours capturing, compiling and analysing data.

Tracking marketing effectiveness topped the 2008 wish lists of 35 per cent of marketers, and made the top three for 70 per cent.

"Marketers shouldn't pour money into an idea and then leave the results to chance, only to worry when they don't see a return," said Jerome Fontaine, CEO and Chief Tracker of Fournaise.

"Media clutter, sophisticated consumers and intense competition go some way to explain the wastage, but tracking every marketing dollar spent would mitigate the effect and feed critical real-time analysis back into marketing strategies, which in turn would have more positive impacts on the business bottom line".

Interestingly, when questioned on strategy, marketers believe that the short-term revenue-boosting and lead-generation campaigns were more important (a combined 70 per cent) than long-term intangible brand building (15 per cent), a clear indication that even more so now than before, marketers need to generate results.

Fontaine commented: "Tightening budgets and a slowing economy mean all marketers must be focused on maximising their spending's immediate impact on their company's top and bottom line; but generating more demand for your product or service with no accurate and real-time feedback and analysis on what delivers and what does not is impossible.

"The tools are now available to give marketers actual, and not assumed, visibility to their entire campaign cycle, from pre- to post-launch phase, and to shift their money to the areas where they can see results.

"When it comes to tracking across all media - offline and online, traditional and non-traditional, mass and niche - there's no need to work in the dark when the lights could be on".

The 10 Global Trends in Marketing Effectiveness - Offline and Online are extracted from the Fournaise 2007 Global Marketing Effectiveness Report derived from the Fournaise 2007 Global Marketing Effectiveness Tracking Survey run on more than 3,000 business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) Marketing professionals (chief marketing officers, vice-presidents of marketing, heads of marketing, marketing directors etc) working for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and large corporations in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Greater China, India and Singapore (when combined these regions/countries represent close to 65 per cent of all tracked global advertising spending - offline and online - in 2007).

The Fournaise Marketing Group (Fournaise) is one of the world's leading marketing effectiveness tracking companies.

Using its proprietary and revolutionary Marketing Effectiveness Tracking solutions (called wTAMs - pronounced weetams), Fournaise has the unique ability to help brands, advertisers and advertising agencies track, measure, analyse and maximise the actual performance of all their marketing dollars - spent offline and online - on a real-time basis for better results and incremental growth.

Its portfolio of clients includes MNCs from the Fortune 500 group of companies, leading international advertising agencies and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) seeking to grow locally and/or internationally.

Its wTAMs are used and/or accessed by more than 50,000 organisations and individuals in more than 14 countries worldwide.

Back to top