Judge Each Marketing Initiative without the Noise, Quickly

Evaluate each high-spend marketing initiative quickly - without the noises, like politics, anxieties, and insecurities. Be prepared to make quiet (at first) initiative termination recommendations to the right person in charge of spend, or else various termination considerations will come and visit your department!

Evaluation of each initiative must simply consist of two fact-finding parts: Find and Document (get it ready to present to stakeholders)...

1) ...Spend vs sales data. How much are you spending to advertise in that trade magazine? How much in sales are you getting? Of course, consider Lifetime Values of customers to assess real values. These are your hard values.

2) ...Stakeholder interviews to see if any industry, reputational, or good will values exist in the initiative. These are your soft values. Do your best to apply a quoted (from another stakeholder) estimated value.

Then, you may realize that everything else becomes noise - the politics, fears, anxieties perhaps of stopping such advertising. Maybe there is some industry pressure to keep advertising? Maybe you will discover it is, in fact, the magazine sales rep creating all the pressure?

Recommendations to terminate poorly performing initiatives must be made quickly because not only of the bureaucratic lead times to execute, but also because weeks that go by on wasted spend.

Don't hesitate. Have concerns? Talk to the stakeholders who share them. The spend you save, is the capital you recover.