The Relevance of a Marketing Scorecard

Marketing is an important function of business organizations. It is through marketing that consumers become aware of the products or services offered by different companies. Marketing managers use a marketing scorecard to assess the effectiveness of the marketing techniques that they employ.

Today, marketing is widely-considered to be an industry that requires creativity and innovativeness from its participants. Aside from creating consumer awareness, marketing departments of companies are also tasked to plan, implement and spearhead advertising, selling and distribution efforts of the company. Moreover, this department should be able to anticipate future changes in consumer behavior by undertaking market research.

Today, marketers are challenged not only to implement effective marketing strategies but also to provide quantitative justification or data support for all marketing activities and plans. Through these figures, top-level managers like Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are able to determine how marketing expenditures translate to corporate revenues.

To help marketing executives assess the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns they launched, the concept of marketing scorecard emerged. Through this tool, marketers are able to identify what is working and what is not working with their activities. When developing a marketing scorecard, it is important to consider four marketing elements namely; product, pricing, promotion and placement. Product considerations include product features that can address the needs and wants of the target market. Pricing considerations, on the other hand, include the process of price setting including the different factors that can affect pricing.

Promotion considerations, meanwhile, will include all marketing techniques that could be implemented to create awareness of products and services including advertising, publicity, sales promotion and branding. Lastly, placement or distribution considerations include the distribution channels to use including retailing and point of sale placement. In marketing scorecard development, the four Ps previously mentioned should be integrated into the scorecard. The link between marketing investment and marketing ROI should be highlighted in this scorecard.

Typically, action areas like market positioning and promotion aspects are included. The action areas identified are then given appropriate scores by management executives in a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10. The overall score obtained would then be reflective of the effectiveness of marketing techniques done. A low overall score would suggest that marketing activities need to be improved in terms of achieving their objectives. On the other hand, a high overall marketing score is reflective of effective standards and activities implemented.

A marketing scorecard benefits not only the entire business organization but also the individuals that compose the organization. This tool will benefit the organization because this will help company executives understand better how marketing tools and technique perform. This also leads to better appreciation of the marketing efforts being undertaken. Moreover, with better understanding of how marketing investments fare, it becomes easier for company management to justify an increase in the budget for future marketing endeavors. This scorecard will benefit individuals because it will help each member of the marketing department to understand how important it is for the organization to achieve effectiveness and efficiency in all marketing activities.