Do you want to know?

When it comes to keeping a New Year’s Resolution, experts say there are two factors that make all the difference: how badly you want it and how quickly you see results.

When it comes to business impact analytics, we’ve found that the most important question is “Do you really want to know how much Impact and Value your marketing investments are producing?” The interesting part is that while a marketing leader may say “No,” the C-suite almost always says “Yes!”

This difference in response sums up the crux of the problem.

I am a large technology CMO and CCO turned analytics software CEO. For years, I was locked in a giant argument with the businesses I served about two words: Impact and Value. Our desire to escape that endless debate is why Proof exists today.

Part of the problem is about what words mean. If you read the marketing industry trade press, it’s clear that marketing and PR teams have different understandings of Impact and Value than those held by business leaders. In the end, however, it’s the business that calls the tune, so it makes sense to use their definitions and not create others.

In business, Impact is the measurement of anything that is understood or thought to be a prerequisite to Value. Many marketing and PR teams deliver dashboards designed to display their Impact, but few have been able to tie everything to Value, which is a purely financial idea.

Marketing Impact is the incremental effect you and your team are generating on audience belief and behavior. Awareness is one metric that falls into the Impact category, but there are others that are equally significant such as audience confidence and trust. In general terms, many of the components of the Net Promoter Score (often more valuable and indicative than the score itself) fall into the Impact category.

One important knock-on effect of positive marketing impact is that sales should be able to sell more product to more customers, faster and more profitably, than they could accomplish without strong marketing.

Marketing Value is the incremental financial benefit that derives from marketing impact. This is classic Return on Investment, or ROI. What’s the incremental financial benefit from marketing’s ability to help sales sell more to more customers, faster and more profitably? This value is expressed in revenue, margin and cash flow from revenue numbers, which can in turn drive improvements in valuation.

There’s only one New Year’s Resolution that should matter for Marketing and PR teams: being able to answer these 7 questions by the end of the year.

• How much incremental audience impact did we create in 2016 and 2017?
• How much incremental business value did we create in 2016 and 2017?
• How much incremental audience impact will we create in 2018?
• How much incremental business value will we create in 2018?
• How long does it take for us to create incremental impact and incremental value?
• What’s the risk that we won’t create that impact or that value?
• Are we spending too much or too little on marketing?

Do you want to know the answers?

If you do, Proof can help you get there in about 90 days. If we don't, you owe us nothing.

Mark Stouse is CEO of Proof Analytics, a powerful new business impact analytics platform that helps you and your organization prove and improve your business impact. For more information, visit www.proofanalytics.ai.