Thinking about a marketing execution maturity model
Similar to a CMM (Capabilities Maturity Model), I’d like to explore the idea of a Marketing Execution Maturity Model (MEMM). MEMM is a defined path of improvement that helps organizations increase their ability to execute marketing effectively. MEMM I’m not sure I like the acronym MEMM but it will suffice as a working title for now.
Over the coming months, my hope is to interview a number of organizations about their best practices in marketing execution.
What is a Marketing Maturity Model?
Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute developed the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) as a way to explain the evolutionary processes software development organizations adopt relative to benchmarks and best practices. A CMM process is a defined path of improvement that helps organizations increase their software process capability. A CMM provides:
- a roadmap for optimizing processes
- a collection of best practices
- a shared language
- a way to prioritize
Similar to CMM, I’m thinking that a Marketing Execution Maturity Model would be useful to help marketing organizations adapt as they seek to improve the accuracy and value of their marketing investments. MEMM is a defined path of improvement that helps organizations increase their marketing capability.
MEMM has a primary objective–improve the organization’s capability to effectively execute marketing activities. It represents a path from inconsistently performed practices to mature and repeatable processes that elevate marketing effectiveness. The proposed model would provide the basis for continuous improvement in the practices already established, as well as the basis for the next layer of practices. By stealing liberally from software CMM efforts and writings, we can begin by saying that MEMM is simply a framework that will guide organizations in selecting high priority process improvement actions based on the current maturity of their marketing processes and practices.
What are the benefits of MEMM?
Clearly defined best practices for improving marketing effectiveness are difficult to find for many organizations. A best practice framework for improving the marketing process is needed.
It is the goal of this project to collaborate with some of the world’s leading marketers. The purpose of this collaboration is to jointly develop a collection of best practices, benchmarks, peer network and sense of community that enable mature and repeatable processes for improving marketing performance.
Together, this collaboration will increase involvement through shared purpose, move people forward in the selling process by connecting them to the purpose (and to each other) and create communities for action.
It is believed that this kind of collaboration will provide participants with the following benefits:
- Access to peers and the benefit of a community’s prior experiences
- A common language and a shared vision for improving marketing performance
- A framework for prioritizing actions and improving departmental performance
- A proven mechanism for defining what improvement means for each organization
How is the MEMM Defined?
Like CMM, MEMM would characterize maturity in terms of five levels. Each level is the foundation necessary to progress to the next level of maturity. The five levels are as follows:
- Initial: The marketing process is ad hoc and chaotic. Little is defined. Success depends on individuals and their initiative.
- Repeatable: Basic project management process track costs schedules and results. Process discipline is in place to repeat earlier successes on projects with similar objectives.
- Defined: the process is documented and integrated throughout the organization. All projects follow a defined full lifecycle process.
- Managed: Detailed measures of the marketing process are collected.
- Optimizing: Continuous process improvement is enabled by quantitative feedback from the process and from piloting innovative ideas and technologies.
Next steps?
Next steps? There are a couple of next steps. The first step falls squarely on my shoulders. I will conduct interviews with leaders from various marketing organizations to discuss these ideas. When possible, I will publish these articles. Over time, I’m hoping these articles help solidify some of these ideas.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment