Evaluating marketing impact with Vertical Evolution
ARU academics work with Vertical Evolution to evaluate the impact of marketing on business performance and help clients make informed decisions.
This ARU study provides insights for managers in designing marketing control systems and dashboards and offers guidelines for assessing performance indicators' potential for distinguishing among suppliers.
About Vertical Evolution
Vertical Evolution is a UK-based management consultancy specializing in improving businesses' commercial performance through strategic planning, marketing, sales, and operational management.
Research on marketing performance outcomes is crucial for consultants like Vertical Evolution, as it helps to assess clients' commercial efficiency.
What did ARU and Vertical Evolution work on together?
Vertical Evolution collaborated with ARU researchers to evaluate consulting firms' marketing performance, gaining them a competitive advantage.
The main goal of this collaboration was to assess the impact of marketing on business performance in order to help clients make informed decisions. The study provides a self-diagnostic tool to track performance objectives and identify areas for improvement. The study also offers a mix of evaluative and diagnostic metrics to explain business performance and help senior managers set goals.
The research approach for this report included in-depth desk research, with recommendations given based on Vertical Evolution’s performance assessment. It highlights the importance of selecting the right marketing metrics and key indicators of marketing performance.
What did they find?
This study provides main insights for managers in designing marketing control systems and marketing dashboards. It's also useful for marketers in explaining to senior managers the types of commercial performance metrics on which senior managers usually set goals and on which they are typically evaluated.
Also, the study provides guidelines regarding each performance indicator potential for differentiating among suppliers. Managers can use the proposed measure of commercial performance to perform internal benchmarking (by administering it to salespeople) or competitive benchmarking against rival sales forces (by administering it to customers), thereby providing useful insights to sales leaders.
The improvement of commercial performance ability requires that organisations divert part of their budget and attention away from actual marketing/business programs and toward measurement efforts; this would be counterproductive if it did not improve performance. This study, based on the literature review, provides support for just such a diversion of resources, indicating that it can positively affect firm performance, at least for firms that operate in the high-tech sector.
Finally, the study suggests some strategies to increase the overall use of metrics.
‘This has been a positive experience. It is great to see academia working hard to reach out to private business to work together and swap skills to improve both business and the academic institution.’
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