Marketing is a key part of business success. A focused marketing plan is critical and necessary for short-mid and long-term success. Mistakenly, traditional marketing is often referred to as advertising and promotions, and few businesses include marketing as a corporate strategy for designing offerings and managing partnerships. The ongoing issue continues to be quantifying marketing investments as an opportunity for revenue growth.

In many cases, tourism venues rely more heavily on spending marketing dollars on short-term demand activities to increase seasonal visitation, at the expense of longer term brand and relationship-building initiatives. So how do you quantify marketing investments as an important contribution to revenue growth? In general terms, many businesses are presented with three choices:

(a) Increase MAP spending [marketing, advertising, promotions]
(b) Decrease MAP spending
(c) Monitor the effectiveness of MAP

The only answer is to be accountable … ‘c’ …it’s the only choice that works. As challenging as it may seem, an organizational cultural shift can ensure that option c is managed effectively. This cultural shift, “Measurement Management”, requires that all members of the marketing team quantitatively measure results, assuming accountability for their activities.

Marketing activities should be the result of marketing objectives, and it’s important that these activities are constantly evaluated using a set of established metrics. In simple terms, marketers need to clearly define where to go (objectives), how to get there (strategy), what will it take (resources), and how they know when they have arrived (metrics).

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