How to Evaluate Your Marketing Director

Source: Partner Advantage Advisory

Sally Glick, chief marketing officer, JH Cohn, Roseland NJ writes that like everyone else, marketing directors should be evaluated on the degree to which they accomplish their goals. But in the case of marketing directors, the goals are not easy to define.

Should the success of a seminar be defined in terms of:

• Number of qualified invitees?
• Number of attendees?
• Evaluations by attendees?
• New business opportunities generated?
• Enhancement of the firm’s name recognition?

Once a definition of success is determined, the marketing director can be evaluated on achieving that success. Of course, the next to the last item on the list above may not be a realistic goal, since new business is not always the direct result of a marketing event. And the last item may need to be judged on the basis of the intangibles such as the quality of the speaker and the topic.

Similarly, a marketing director in charge of a newsletter program will probably not be able to justify it in terms of new business it generates. The goal may be more subjective—to help establish the firm as an industry resource.

The marketing director should develop a plan consistent with firm goals. Then he or she can be judged on how well the plan was executed rather than on how much new business came in. The marketing director does not eliminate the need for partners to bring in new business, but should support those efforts.

The marketing director can be properly evaluated only if the firm understands its own goals. In that context the firm must ask itself which of the following are important to it:

• The quality and quantity of marketing activities?
• How these activities tie in to the firm’s goals?
• The quantity of personal plans prepared for partners and staff?
• How well those plans are supported?
• How many business and professional organizations the partners and staff participate in?
• Partners on charitable board?
• Quantity of networking events?
• Press coverage of the firm?
• Direct mail responses?
• Attendance at firm-sponsored seminars?
• Quantity of Web hits?
• Responses to advertising? 

The marketing director can also be evaluated on his or her personal qualities and goals:

• Attitude and helpfulness
• Creativity and energy
• Entrepreneurial qualities
• Teamwork
• Management of projects
• Oral and written presentations

From Partner Advantage Advisory, September 2005, p. 4. Hudson Sawyer Professional Services Marketing Inc. www.hudsonsawyer.com. Subscription $279 per year; single issues—$25. Orders 800-945-6462.