Marketers face greater accountability

• Accountability the biggest issue
• Marketers must do ‘more with less'
• Greater measurement tools

Singapore - According to a recent report from News Digital Media in Australia accountability is unsurprisingly the top issue facing marketers today, and it seems those sentiments are also shared by the industry in Singapore.

The study revealed marketers are experiencing greater scrutiny from management, as well as a more frequent monitoring of marketing activity with reporting cycles becoming shorter.Respondents also highlighted budget cuts and truncated marketing planning cycles.

Melissa Siew, the former marketing manager and now general manager at Zuji Singapore, firmly agrees that accountability is the biggest challenge for local marketers in the current downturn.

"With budget cuts, marketers are facing the increasingly difficult task of doing more with less," Siew said.

"In addition the marketing mix has also changed as a result of smaller budgets. Spending from traditional to the digital space is increasing as the ROI for digital is evolving and has become clearer than before."

Josh Goh, senior manager of corporate services at the GMP Group, explained that management requires more substantial performance indicators these days, other than the usual increased brand awareness and hits to website.

"For every lead generated from a campaign, management wants to know how many are converted into actual revenue for the company. Their main concern is whether the campaign has brought positive impact on the bottom line," Goh said.

While both agree that marketers are facing far greater scrutiny from management on the dollars spent, Siew explains that by knowing the direct impact on the business through marketing spending, marketers are also presented with an opportunity to do accountability against metrics well.

"It opens up opportunities by sheer depth of business understanding and it's only an issue when we can't get it right. Currently, we are at a stage where we're still perfecting the science of measurement for marketing," she said.

Goh believes the challenging part is that in order to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, you are required to invest resources into a proper tracking system. 

"The question is often whether the resources would be better used else where? It is crucial for marketers to define the objectives for every campaign and for their management to be fully aware of these end actions. If there is no clear understanding between marketers and management, then it would be very challenging to convince management of the effectiveness of the campaign and most importantly ask for more budget for future campaigns," Goh said.

Greater scrutiny also means shorter reporting cycles, with marketers now being expected to have a shorter lead time between level of marketing activity and volume of sales.

"Marketers are now being focused to drive sales numbers up without concerning themselves of the long term impact certain activities might have on the brand," Siew said.

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