Marketing efficiency is one of the aspects that have grown considerably in recent years. This indicator has become a great tool for executives to measure the performance of an agency and its staff, but it is not as definitive as it has been led to believe by many during these times.

The efficiency measurement provides a good estimate of the impact of the strategies applied, but it comes out short due to one major flaw. The main issue with this is that it paints an incomplete picture of the work of an agency, because it doesn’t matter how efficient a marketer or an agency is, without a solid record of sales that proves their effectiveness to back it up; it’s almost a waste of time.

With this in mind, conversions and sales are the fundamental indicators - and consider by many the gold standard – for the measuring of success in the marketing environment, but achieving the desire lasting impact requires more than just being efficient at the tasks at hand of the previously developed strategy.  It takes a strong balanced relationship between marketing effectiveness and efficiency to produce meaningful results.

 

Never lose focus on the goal

Whenever a marketing strategy is implemented, it is beneficial that every party involve has to be aware of the fact that the separation of this symbiotic relationship between efficiency and effectiveness while it may not kill the chances of achieving some measure of success, is going to hinder its chances of having a meaning impact on the long run.

To avoid that, is very important to not lose sight of the objective: a strategy that gets executed the right way, without any major hitch in timing or quality. When this happens and is done in part with patience by the client and all the hard work of the agency, there are higher chances of getting the desired results from both.

This is not saying that if an agency is not making the best out of the resources and budget that they have been given, they are not going to be held accountable or get its attention called by the hiring company. Au contraire, if there is a situation when the agency is not being perceived as resourceful or working towards the completion of the goals already set in the strategy, that is something that should be worked on but being aware that being too strict or close minded in an objective driven stance could seriously hurt the end result.

It is said that too much of something is bad for a person’s health, the same principle may be applied here:  too much efficiency or effectiveness alone may be as hurtful as not doing it enough, the key to success is a good balance between the two.

 

Productivity is king but ROI will always take the crown

The implementation of faster and more powerful technological tools has been perceived by executives as the best way to lower costs by achieving results in a faster time frame than it normally would, something that at first sight may be misinterpreted as a shortcut to better results and higher earnings but that’s not a given fact.

Having the ability of working on a creative process in less time and with more capacity than ever before, doesn’t necessarily makes it an effective or successful one. A good marketing strategy is only as good as the sums of its parts and each piece should be treated and handled with the same dedication. This argument clashes with the idea that being more efficient will translate in a more effective result.

In marketing, nothing is set in stone and one of the keys to get results is to understand how this efficiency and effectiveness situation works is taking into consideration that the creative process takes time when it’s done properly but creative staff should not be working free without boundaries. So when a more productive and efficient a strategy is executed, the more likely are its chances of generating a higher ROI and that´s one of the main goals of any company that uses the services of a marketing agency.

One thing is certain, demanding too much efficiency will hurt the strategy and doing the same with effectiveness will affect budgets. Both scenarios will sabotage the all around success of any strategy that you want to develop, so aim for balance between and surely good projects and profit will come out of that.

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