90% of marketers not trained in marketing performance, ROI

A woeful lack of training in marketing performance and ROI within marketing qualifications, coupled with marketers entering the profession with no formal marketing qualification, has led to many being unable to properly demonstrate to top management the business effectiveness of their marketing spending, campaigns and activities.

by Helen Leggatt

Marketing performance measurement and management firm The Fournaise Marketing Group has released what it calls "eyebrow-raising" findings from its Global Marketing Effectiveness Program. They found that a worrying 90% of marketers are not trained in marketing performance and marketing ROI.

As a result, 80% find it hard to properly demonstrate to their top management that the marketing strategies they put in place are effective.

Furthermore, more than two-thirds of marketers (67%) demonstrated a total lack of understanding of what ROI is about by implying that marketing ROI doesn't require a financial outcome. Unsurprisingly, these are the same marketers who are unable to correctly identify the correct formula for marketing ROI. In fact, 31% of marketers believe that simply measuring their audience reach is as good as signifying marketing ROI and 64% rely on brand awareness as their top marketing ROI key performance indicator.

It gets worse.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of marketers present marketing results to their top management without including any financial outcome reporting. Not surprising when you learn that more than 80% are unable to converse in the language of finance and accounting and put together a profit and loss or balance sheet or give the correct definitions for basic financial key performance indicators such as EBITDA, P/E Ratio and ROE).

According to Jerome Fontaine, global CEO and chief tracker at Fournaise, the problem lies with marketers' education. Analysis of hundreds of marketing degrees and diplomas revealed that a whopping 90% do not contain any specific marketing performance or marketing ROI training while the vast majority of marketers (85%) enter the profession with a qualification that is not marketing related such as English, Journalism, Sociology or Foreign Languages.

"In other words," says Fontaine, "every Tom, Dick and Harry is a marketer, lacking the scientific and financial knowledge necessary to inform and optimize the creative side of Marketing. CEOs have told us again and again: they want ROI marketers, i.e. 360-degree performance machines trained to deliver (real) business results and prove/optimize ROI. As long as marketers continue to fail to get trained in, master the use of and optimize marketing performance and marketing ROI, they will struggle to demonstrate to CEOs that they are not 'money spenders who jump on (and hide) behind the latest fads and blow smoke', but real business generators."