According to Pat, these are the five key questions that have been known to pop up in discussion with CEOs/CFOs, often short-circuiting otherwise brilliant marketing careers.

1. What are the specific goals for our marketing spending, and how should we expect to connect that spending to incremental revenue and/or margins?
2. What would be the short and long-term impacts on revenue and margins if we spent 20% more/less on marketing overall in the next 12 months?
3. Compared to relevant benchmarks (historical, competitive, and marketplace), how effective are we at transforming marketing investments into profit growth?
4. What are appropriate targets for improving our marketing leverage ($’s of profit per $ of marketing spend) in the next 1/3/5 year horizons, and what key initiatives are we counting on to get us there?
5. What are the priority questions we need to answer to inform our knowledge of the payback on marketing investments – and what are we doing to close those knowledge gaps?

How you answer these five questions will get you promoted, fired, or worse — marginalized.

So what should you do?

Pat provides specific, actionable, accountable recommendations.

If you’re a marketer, this is a must-read.

Related posts:

1. Marketing In The Era of Accountability In 1980, the UK’s esteemed Institute of Practitioners in Advertising...