Average time in weeks to develop and launch a new marketing campaign (from ideation to the delivery of an offer/message to a customer/prospect)

This is the average time in weeks that it takes a business entity to develop and launch a new marketing campaign, from developing the idea through preparing and delivering the finished offer/message to the client/prospect. Cycle time is the total time from the beginning of the activity to the end, including both time spent actually performing it and time spent waiting to move forward. This Cycle Time measure is intended to help companies analyze this duration related to the process group "Develop and manage marketing plans".

Benchmark Data

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Measure Category:
Cycle Time
Measure ID:
105823
Total Sample Size:
550 All Companies
Performers:
25th
- Median
- 75th
-
Key Performance
Indicator:
No

Compute this Measure

Units for this measure are weeks.

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Average time in weeks to develop and launch a new marketing campaign (from ideation to the delivery of an offer/message to a customer/prospect)

Key Terms

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Cycle Time

Cycle time is the total time from the beginning of the process to the end. This includes both time spent actually performing the process and time spent waiting to move forward.

Measure Scope

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Cross Industry (7.3.0)

  • 3.3.1 - Establish goals, objectives, and measures for products/services by channel/segment (10148) - Determining what to achieve by marketing. Create qualitative and quantitative targets. Establish metrics to track performance (for individual Market segments [10109] and Channels for target segments [10129]). Enlist the head of marketing to determine marketing priorities and the related measures. (The decision in establishing these goals, objectives, and metrics is founded in Develop marketing strategy [10102] and takes cues from current priorities and organizational strategy.)
  • 3.3.2 - Establish marketing budgets (10149) - Creating a budget for the organization's marketing efforts, in line with the business-wide strategic outlook. Create a plan to distribute resources for achieving the marketing strategy in light of the overall business strategy. Make cost assumptions; calculate the estimated total revenue from the marketing activities against the costs/expenses of these activities. Forecast the return on investment. Attribute costs to the appropriate marketing activities such as promotional campaigns, advertising, marketing communications, PR campaigns, personnel, and office space. Enlist the financial and marketing functions.
    • 3.3.2.1 - Confirm marketing alignment to business strategy (10155) - Ensuring corroboration of the marketing strategy and the organizational strategy. Ensure the organization's marketing strategy/plan aligns with the overall business strategy. Fine-tune the marketing plan according to the organizational strategy.
    • 3.3.2.2 - Determine costs of marketing (10156) - Calculating the total cost of marketing the organization's portfolio of products/services. Calculate the total outlay needed for promoting, selling, and delivering the organization's products/services to customers. Account for all costs to acquire customers and sustain a relationship with them. Include the expenses needed for promotional actives, warehousing, transactional costs, and distribution of the organization's offering.
    • 3.3.2.3 - Create marketing budget (10157) - Estimating the outlay required for promoting, selling, and distributing the products/services of the organization. Add up the expenses of all activities necessitated in marketing, such as promotional campaigns, advertising, marketing communications, PR campaigns, employing skilled personnel, and office space.
    • 3.3.2.4 - Determine projected ROI for marketing investment (17683) - Estimating how much profit the company would generate for its expenses on marketing . Forecasted return on investment, used as a metric to gauge the efficiency of marketing, is beneficial in revising marketing budgets and adjusting costs to improve the overall yield.
  • 3.3.3 - Develop and manage pricing (20593) - Determining and maintaining a pricing mechanism based on forecasted sales and that enables a pricing equilibrium for the lifecycles of products/services. Create a pricing mechanism, factoring in attributes relating to the market, customers, sales, and the cost of production. Implement this pricing mechanism over all products/services. Analyze its performance, and adjust accordingly.
    • 3.3.3.1 - Understand resource requirements for each product/service and delivery channel/method (20009) - Determining the production and distribution costs for each product or service, and each channel or method as factors in determining overall pricing.
    • 3.3.3.2 - Determine corporate incentives (18948) - Introducing financial inducements, such as discounts, to distributors, resellers or vendors as a motivation to prioritize selling company's products or services over those of its competitors.
    • 3.3.3.3 - Determine pricing based on volume/unit forecast (10163) - Establishing a dynamic pricing mechanism for the organization's offerings that is supported by the number of units in production. Outline a system for determining the optimum price point for each product/service. Based this model on an estimation of the volume of anticipated sales for each offering and variable costs.
    • 3.3.3.4 - Execute pricing plan (10164) - Implementing the pricing mechanism to determine prices for all individual offerings in the organizational portfolio. Calculate the prices of all offerings based on the established methodology and/or formulaic structure.
    • 3.3.3.5 - Evaluate pricing performance (10165) - Examining the efficiency of pricing with the objective of identifying any divergence from the equilibrium prices and avoiding any deadweight loss. Gauge the performance of the pricing plan by tracking growth in the revenue and/or customer uptake, secured as a result of new prices. Measure the performance of pricing by periodically checking the profits generated from the sale of each of the organization's offerings against the backdrop of any events that may have influenced the uptake of a certain good/service by the customer base.
    • 3.3.3.6 - Refine pricing as needed (10166) - Refining the pricing mechanism to create equitable prices for all products/services with the objective of maximizing the profits and/or customer uptake of these offerings. Reconcile the pricing mechanism in order to achieve equilibrium pricing. Adjust the prices for all of the organization's offerings, using the insights gleaned from examining how much profit or customer uptake is generated by the present pricing strategy.
    • 3.3.3.7 - Implement promotional pricing programs (11495) - Managing schemes that offer lower pricing for a limited time as a promotional and sales incentive when launching a new product or a service.
    • 3.3.3.8 - Implement other retail pricing programs (11496) - Determining the optimum consumer pricing for each product or service at the point of sale, based on production and distribution costs and estimated sales volume.
    • 3.3.3.9 - Communicate and implement price changes (11497) - Assigning new prices or pricing adjustments to products or services to replace the original base prices. Update the prices in product catalogs and databases, and disseminate the information through all involved distribution and marketing channels.
    • 3.3.3.10 - Achieve regulatory approval for pricing (17684) - Obtaining internal price approvals and governmental approvals that are required for licensed products and for products that can be reimbursed by the government.
  • 3.3.4 - Develop and manage promotional activities (20010) - Conceptualizing, testing, and executing product/service/brand promotions. Once a promotion has launched, this process continues as the organization tweaks parts of the promotion or chooses to use ideas or lessons learned during the promotion in future activities. The promotion's performance according to organizational measures is also evaluated in this process. Determine early on whether you need third party help with promotion. Purchase lists, consult with social media experts, hire seasonal staff, or pay for additional research.
    • 3.3.4.1 - Define promotional concepts and objectives (10167) - Outlining a conceptual framework for all promotional activity in order to create an overarching aspiration and ensure consistency. Create a plan for running promotional programs and designing the associated activities in order to increase visibility or sales. Determine how the organization quantifies what it wishes to achieve from these activities, what sort of messages the organization comfortable publicizing, what channels the organization wishes to employ, etc.
    • 3.3.4.2 - Develop marketing messages (10159) - Developing the central messages for a segment of its customers. Craft concise statements that position the value proposition of individual products/services around the pressing concerns in the market, thereby showing how the organization's offerings are the right fit for the customers.
    • 3.3.4.3 - Define target audience (10160) - Determining the appropriate audience to direct marketing efforts at. Identify the particular group of customers to target. Discover the appropriate customer groups at a micro-level. Use techniques such as segmentation analysis, whereby the entire population is sliced according to certain demographic or behavioral attributes.
    • 3.3.4.4 - Plan and test promotional activities (10168) - Developing a scheme for executing the promotional programs and campaigns, and testing these on sample audiences. Create a program plan, and carry out trials for promotional activities. Develop a scheme for how, when, where, and by whom the promotional schemes and campaigns will be deployed. Design incentives that convince or tempt the consumer to take up the organization's offerings. Conduct focus groups and pilot programs that reach out to a smaller number of people from among the target audiences to validate effectiveness.
    • 3.3.4.5 - Execute promotional activities (10169) - Executing promotional programs in the market for reaching out to the desired customer segments. Implement the promotional schemes and campaigns. Create collaterals for the dissemination of information about the product, product line, brand, or company to the target audiences in an effective manner. Leverage relationships with distributors, vendors, and retailers. Consider enlisting professional services such as design, PR, and advertising firms.
    • 3.3.4.6 - Evaluate promotional performance metrics (10170) - Evaluating the success of promotional programs through metrics that track the impact of these activities. Examine the performance of promotional activities. Measure the success of these programs through metrics representative of customer uptake, market penetration, sustenance of impact created, revenue growth through offerings marketed, etc. Measure through primary data collection. Analyze through various statistical techniques to generate insights.
    • 3.3.4.7 - Refine promotional performance metrics (10171) - Fine-tuning promotional activities by employing the insights gleaned from the quantitative, as well as any qualitative, performance evaluations. Change certain attributes of the schemes, campaigns, and programs deployed in order to increase the impact generated, in terms of measures already agreed upon such as customer uptake, market penetration, sustenance of impact created, and revenue growth through offerings marketed.
    • 3.3.4.8 - Incorporate learning into future/planned consumer promotions (10172) - Incorporating the understanding developed by studying promotional activities as well as refining them. Include the best practices and value-enhancing attributes identified in Refine promotional activities [10171] into similarly planned schemes, programs, and campaigns. Adjust promotional activities to further increase the effectiveness of the overall promotional efforts.
  • 3.3.5 - Track customer management measures (10153) - Collating all customer-centered metrics. The objective is to create a big-picture view of the customers' mindset and their behavior pertaining to the organization's offerings.
    • 3.3.5.1 - Determine customer lifetime value (10173) - Estimating customer loyalty and the average contribution made by them to revenues, over their lifespan. Use metrics to quantify the commitment of customers to the offerings of the organization, such as measures of tendency to switch brands/providers, number/proportion of return customers, and the number of customers using multiple substitutable offerings.
    • 3.3.5.2 - Analyze customer revenue trend (10174) - Analyzing the revenue stream generated by the sale of the organization's products/services in order to identify trends therein. Examine data relating to the inflow of revenue from individual/groups of customers in order to identify patterns in the generation and sustenance of receivables. Conduct statistical analysis over the stream of revenue collected and the point of origin associated with each unit of sale through metrics such as the accounting rate of return, the GAAP revenue over a given period, and customer lifetime revenue.
    • 3.3.5.3 - Analyze customer attrition and retention rates (10175) - Calculating measures that capture the proportion of customers the organization is able to retain to those it is losing. Compute metrics such as the tendency to switch brands/providers and the proportion of return customers to comprehend the trends within the customer attrition and retention rates.
    • 3.3.5.4 - Analyze customer metrics (10176) - Studying all measures of the customer's behavior and conduct toward the organization's offerings in order to glean insight and identify patterns into their decision making. Closely examine all categories of data sets over a customer base. Analyze data points related to customer loyalty, retention, value, conversion, level of satisfaction, attrition, etc. Flesh out measures for an all-encompassing analysis that provides a macro-level picture of the customer's behavior and mindset related to the organization's products/services.
    • 3.3.5.5 - Revise customer strategies, objectives, and plans based on metrics (10177) - Reviewing and reappraising the strategies, objectives, and plans for all customer-centered processes. Revisit all customer-focused processes and activities--which relate to their acquisition, conversion, and retention--with the objective of revising them in light of customer analysis. Revise accordingly.
  • 3.3.6 - Analyze and respond to customer insight (16613) - Reviewing and responding to customer feedback. Create tickets to initiate bug fixes or to propose feature updates. Monitor and track progress.
    • 3.3.6.1 - Monitor and respond to social media activity (16627) - Following postings on social media to promote offerings, raise brand awareness, interact with customers, increase customer engagement and brand loyalty, respond to queries, gauge sentiment regarding company's products or services, and to derive customer insight.
    • 3.3.6.2 - Analyze customer website activity (16614) - Examining user activity on company, vendor or reseller websites to improve traffic on and to the website, improve user experience on the website to simplify purchasing process and encourage repeat purchases, and to increase the site's visibility in search engine results. Various metrics can be used to measure user activity, such as number of users who are new, returning or unique, time spent on page, session duration, bounce rate, click through rate, conversion rate, and others.
    • 3.3.6.3 - Analyze customer purchase patterns (16615) - Conducting analyses to uncover customer purchasing habits. Detect patterns and categorize users based on similar characteristics and behaviors, demographic information, geographic location, search history, etc.
    • 3.3.6.4 - Develop business rules to provide personalized offers (16616) - Creating formulas for personalized offers, purchasing recommendations and targeted advertisements for customers on the basis of previously detected purchase patterns [16615].
    • 3.3.6.5 - Monitor effectiveness of personalized offers and adjust offers accordingly (16617) - Analyzing how well the targeted offers perform to see whether they result in an increased conversion rate. Reanalyze the purchase patterns or modify those business rules that are produce effective recommendations.
  • 3.3.7 - Develop and manage packaging strategy (10154) - Creating, executing, and administering a strategic road map for packaging products/services. Determine how to package products/services into finished offerings that can be directly marketed to prospective customers. Consider physicality, perishability, and shelf-life. Develop a strategy for packaging products/services. Test alternatives. Collect feedback. Refine the option chosen for execution. Have marketing, product development, and supply chain functions work together to develop sound packaging.
    • 3.3.7.1 - Plan packaging strategy (10178) - Creating a strategic road map for how to package products/services into desirable solutions while increasing profitability. Create a scheme for how the organization will bundle and wrap its products/services into a presentable and sellable offering. Consider what aspects or components of an offering the organization can extract the maximum revenue from, and reduce the less profitable constituents while maintaining a high perceptible value for the customers. Balance maximizing profit with benefits to the customer.
    • 3.3.7.2 - Test packaging options (10179) - Piloting the packaged products/services in the market with a test audience. Create trial runs using techniques such as focus groups of the final product, wrapped and bundled.
    • 3.3.7.3 - Execute packaging strategy (10180) - Implementing the final packaging. Put into action the packaging strategy in light of the insights accumulated from testing various options.
    • 3.3.7.4 - Refine packaging (10181) - Fine-tuning the packaging that has been developed and tested using insights gleaned from feedback.
  • 3.3.8 - Develop go-to-market strategy (21425) - Creation of a plan detailing how a company plans to execute a successful product release and promotion, and ultimately its sale to customers.
  • 3.3.9 - Manage product marketing content (16629) - Creating descriptions of products that are promotional and informative in content in order to initiate and increase sales. Marketing content consists of text, and optionally, images.
    • 3.3.9.1 - Manage product images (16630) - Producing or overseeing the creation or acquisition of photos, images and graphics for a product description, advertisement or a website. Like the copy [18131], product images are chosen and edited to enhance the product description and to convince consumers to purchase the product.
    • 3.3.9.2 - Manage product copy (18130) - Authoring or overseeing the creation of the textual portion of a product description, advertisement, or web page, including the headline, body, product attributes, and brand or advertiser information. A copy is designed to provide information about the product and to catch and hold the interest of prospective buyers long enough to persuade them to make a purchase. The copy of a website is called its content.