By Alice Brady, Chief Strategy Officer, Responsible Marketing Agency

Marketing effectiveness is a buzzword and a broad church that seems to mean different things to different people in the industry. It’s often used as a catch-all for anything that proves that marketing has delivered what it set out to, or even – let’s be honest – results retrofitted to campaigns for the purposes of award entries.

Sharper marketers have narrowed the definition of marketing effectiveness to proving the impact of marketing on the business’s bottom line. The transition of marketing, from a cost the business endures, to a source of return on investment, was welcome and well documented.

While the success of marketing campaigns is judged solely by the profits they generate, ESG compliance and excellence can be perceived as a hindrance to marketing effectiveness.

The truth though, is that ESG practices can be a source of efficiency and competitive advantage and we should redefine a more rounded approach to marketing effectiveness. By making ESG a priority from the outset, brands can improve performance and responsibly grow the bottom line. These objectives aren’t in competition and your ESG plan is not there to hinder your marketing effectiveness, but to help it. And here is how to make that happen.

Marketing effectiveness should be measured holistically.

Essentially, responsible marketing means demonstrating good practice across all aspects of E, S and G. We should think of marketing effectiveness as multidimensional – delivering profits while benefiting people and the planet – and create a measurement framework that reflects that.

Solid governance foundations should form the basis for every effective marketing campaign

While the ‘G’ in ESG often gets overlooked as the least glamorous of the trifecta, inadequate governance practices make it more likely that companies will fail to achieve their business and ESG goals. Simply put, compliance ensures that every dollar you spend is reaching the right (and real!) consumers, maximising your chances of a return on your investment.

After all, Nielsen reported that only 53% of the impressions served in the UK reached their intended target; there’s clearly a colossal amount of media money being wasted due to poor governance practices.

Strong compliance in your marketing will have a positive impact on quality, minimise wastage in ad spend and mitigate risk. It’s a win-win. 

So how can brands ramp up the ‘G’ to help them realise their potential? Let’s take a look at three key steps to building robust governance frameworks.

• Work out where you are

The starting point needs to be establishing the current baseline – assessing existing practices and procedures in relation to regulatory, consumer and corporate requirements and pinpointing gaps. In essence, to move forward, we first must determine where we are. Once the baseline is clear you can create pathways to close those gaps. Any brand undergoing an ecosystem transformation would also need to have this firm foundation, to then be able to drive governance and compliance throughout the transformative process and beyond.

• Make an ongoing commitment

Brands need to know how to remain compliant, especially in terms of data and operations on an ongoing basis. This means rigorous rules on the use of data or consumer information and ensuring responsible interactions in terms of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). It is also likely to involve website engagement considerations (such as accessibility) and, of course, clear tracking of marketing effectiveness. 

• The company you keep

Brands that build marketing strategies in a vacuum will struggle to attain and maintain strong ESG credentials in their marketing activities. It is important to establish well-matched supplier relationships, and work with industry trade associations to support delivery of critical industry products or programmes. WFA’s recent research supports this, highlighting that marketing procurement has the potential to be a powerful effectiveness force for good. This is a meaningful move away from the traditional role of marketing procurement teams, which is typically to help ‘bring in the right partner at the right price’.

Measuring (and celebrating) marketing effectiveness

Getting all these things working well is fundamental to creating a strong culture of effectiveness. So, when we ask ourselves if our marketing campaign has proven to be effective, we need to redefine our understanding of what effectiveness should look like. 

The conscious and methodical inclusion of ESG considerations from the initial planning stages leads to more efficient and effective use of ad spend. The success of a marketing strategy can, and should, be assessed using a multi-metric approach of profit alongside ESG impact. Marketing effectiveness today means being profitable and responsible.

As it is viable, and even fruitful, to develop a campaign that is both profitable and responsible, our expectations of awarded and celebrated work should, at least, reflect due diligence from an ESG perspective.

Particularly from a governance point of view, potential award-winners ought to be able to demonstrate their governance and compliance practices as a prerequisite for entering the ring to be celebrated for their marketing effectiveness.

In the near future, specialist diversity, inclusion, sustainability and purpose-based awards categories will inevitably be phased out, as inclusion of ESG considerations within mainstream marketing strategies becomes the norm, reflecting holistic, responsible marketing effectiveness.