Nearly three-quarters of companies have guidelines to measure the success of their marketing programs, and for one-half such measurements are a requirement for obtaining marketing funding, according to the King Fish Media “2009 Survey on Marketing, Media and Measurement,” conducted in partnership with HubSpot, Junta42 and the Upshot Institute.
The No. 1 metric of success for the marketing and sales managers polled was the number of new customers acquired. Lead generation and increased sales were also tracked by more than two-thirds of respondents.
The marketers studied considered their corporate Website the best method for achieving their top goal of reaching prospective customers. Social media and custom content and media were not far behind.
Fully 86% of respondents said their companies were currently creating or planned to create original content for customers and prospects, and 74% believed such content was more effective than traditional advertising at generating marketing ROI.
Respondents were very positive about the value of corporate efforts, with more than eight in 10 saying companies and brands could produce content as engaging and informative as media companies.
"Marketers have been aware of the effectiveness of building relationships and trust with content since long before the Internet," said Gordon Plutsky, director of marketing and research at King Fish, in a statement. "Technological change has rapidly increased media channel options and the patterns of information consumption among consumers. More and more marketers are abandoning old media—and traditional advertising—to venture out on their own with original content."
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Check out today’s other article, “Loyal Visitors but Small Share from Social Sites.”