The return on investment is revealed as the main weak point of the marketing sector

An investigation by SPSS reveals that very few professionals pay attention to the economic effectiveness of their campaigns.

Marketing professionals seem immersed in a race to win new customers that makes them neglect aspects of such importance as the return on investment, according to a study commissioned by SPSS, the leading software and predictive analytics firm, to the firm of Vanson Bourne research.

The more than one hundred professionals who answered the study stated that their main business objective is customer acquisition and retention. Only 5% said they considered the return on investment as one of their priorities, which, for Colin Shearer, senior vice president of analytical strategies at SPSS, is an omission of crucial information at a particularly hard economic time. “It’s as if the sector had lost its way in terms of the budgetary and financial implications of marketing campaigns,” he said. “We are no longer in the years of the boom, and to make sure that the investments bear fruit, it is necessary to justify all the expenses.”

The SPSS study has also revealed that small and medium-sized businesses are the most receptive when it comes to measuring the return on investment of a campaign: 16% of marketing professionals working in departments with less than five people consider it a priority objective, compared to only 5% of those who work in departments of more than fifty people.

In addition, the research found that some marketing professionals make their decisions based solely on their instinct. 7% of respondents acknowledged relying only on their feelings to judge whether marketing activities truly meet their objectives, rather than reviewing success stories or evaluating actual results.

The predictive analysis software is one of the main tools to determine the effectiveness of the return on investment. The British company Saga, a provider of financial services, health and leisure, achieved significant cost savings and an increase in income of one million pounds after the first year. In addition, your marketing department significantly reduced your mail expenses when you used it to better target customers to target specific campaigns.

“Relying only on instinct is no longer enough. To prove their value within an organization, marketing experts must be able to demonstrate the success of their campaigns and to prove the return on investment, “added Colin Shearer.