Grouxo Marx, a genius in its own way, inspired me to write this post. Intelligent and fun, disruptively constructive, philosophical disrespectful, and forward-thinking. In the new era of marketing, an industry that is called to save the world, marketers should be re-thinking the way they plan and practice in order to survive. Your job is at stake!

1.       “If you don’t know where you go, you may end up anywhere.” Grouxo Marx. Objectives

Objectives are the key element of any project. In fact, clear objectives are the only way to prove whether you succeeded or not in all cases! If you still plan your marketing projects with goals like “Increase brand awareness” or to “Improve the relationship with our customers”, you are most likely in the path to be judged subjectively by your superior’s taste for your creativity, a nice picture of your booth at a trade show or whatever he or she liked or disliked of your marketing project.

2.       “From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.” G. Marx. Validation

Isn’t it right, that you would never jump into a pool without knowing that it is full of water? If you do not validate your marketing projects from an economic point of view prior to investment, you are most likely on the way to have budget cuts, undermining the relevance of your job. Let’s say that you are planning a point-of-sale promotion, have you calculated its break-even point? Do you know what is the impact on sales needed for the project to pay itself?

3.       “I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty” G. Marx. Monetary conversion

Whether we like it or not, money rules. If we are not able to convert marketing inputs into monetary outcomes, even if we can isolate marketing positive effects, we will always fall short from General Management and shareholders’ expectations. “Show me the money!”… does it sound familiar?

4.       “I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it”. G. Marx. Evaluation

If money rules, marketers need to be able to show the impact of marketing on the profit and loss account. Not knowing if our marketing project is losing money, doesn’t prevent loses from accumulating. Sooner or later we will pay the price. If you are not evaluating the economic impact of your projects or campaigns, you are headed for surprises (if they are good, most likely they will not be attributed to marketing, if they are bad, you will be one of its causes)

5.       “Getting older is not a problem. You just have to live long enough” G. Marx. Planning

Let’s admit it, most companies do not gather enough marketing intelligence from its very own campaigns and projects. Business intelligence not only comes from market research and industry trends. Probably the best and closest-to-your-reality business intelligence comes from your own campaigns. What types of data do you collect from your own projects? Is it useful for the future? How much do you use key learnings in your marketing planning?

Summarizing, if you want to keep your marketing job and professionally progress during the years to come, make sure you don’t miss to do the following:

·        Set relevant, clear, identifiable, and measurable objectives,

·        Validate your projects from the economic point of view prior to investing in them,

·        Convert marketing performance into real money (not just value, but cash),

·        Evaluate your marketing projects from the financial point of view, and

·        Use your own experiences to improve and plan to obtain business results, not just marketing metrics.