Marketing effectiveness is the measurement of the results compared to the money spent. The return on marketing investment (ROMI) should create a reasonable profit for marketers. For this reason, effective marketing is highly focused on results. To get a result favorable to the ROMI, strategic management of the entire marketing mix is crucial.
A marketing mix includes the product, place or distribution, price and promotion. These are called the four P's of marketing. The combination of strategies for each of the four marketing components creates the total offer to the customer. If the complete offer grabs the attention, interest, desire and action (AIDA) of the desired, or target, consumers to create good results for the money spent, marketing effectiveness is reached.
Strategic planning of the offer is made after an analysis of market research. Market research gives marketers valuable information about their target audience, or the type of consumers most likely to want or need their client's products. Clients pay marketers out of their advertising budget in order to get sales leads. If clients don't get profitable results on their marketing investment, their budget was wasted and they don't give a marketing agency repeat business. A marketing agency can't stay in business unless it can consistently create marketing effectiveness for its clients.
For example, advertising must not only communicate so well to the target market that it compels them to want to purchase the client's products, but the ads must be strategically placed in terms of reach. For example, the target audience for orthopedic stockings is likely to be seniors, so placing even the best written ads for this product in a teen magazine would be ineffective marketing. Creativity in terms of ad copywriting and graphic design means nothing to paying clients without marketing effectiveness. While some advertising agencies focus on creative ads and winning awards, marketing agencies are concerned primarily with results. Advertising is one small part of the overall marketing mix; it's included in the promotion aspect of it.
Marketers measure the results of their efforts to reach the target audience using scientific tests. In this way, they gauge the response by their target markets to specific ads and marketing efforts. Strategic management can then be improved after measurement analysis for subsequent marketing campaigns. Effective marketing agencies must quickly learn what works so their clients' ROMI remains worthwhile and they stay in business. Marketing management operations (MOM) also exist within departments of corporations and not purely in agencies.
