Analyst- and influencer-relations means are coming under increasing pressure to produce metrics that evaluate their performance. One of the increasing challenges for top marketing managers is to show the impact of all activities on financial consequences.That’s the topic we’ll be discussing in a Lighthouse webinar on January 21st.

AR managers are often in functional silos. Clearly that work integrates into the rest of the organisation. What Lighthouse is seeing is the scaling up and centralisation of marketing metrics. Once AR people determined their own metrics. Now we are starting to see finance and marketing counterparts brought in. Sometimes we see accounting functions of firms starting to develop financial metrics for marketing because the CMO doesn’t have them: management accountants step in, and don’t always see the value in the marketing activities they are tracking.

Our perspective is that AR and other marketing expenditures are investment in brand equity.  That often doesn’t appear in the accounts, because it’s an intangible asset that few firms quantify for themselves. However, if you look at the most widespread and well-respected measures for the intangible value of a firm, those intangible assets play increasing roles and – for superbrands – represent most of the shareholder value.

Without measuring the financial impact of their programmes, AR managers will not be able to make a case for their current and proposed budgets. AR managers looking to maintain or extend their budgets for particular activities need to propose how they will measure their outcomes to explain the impact of their work.

To register for the webinar, visit: http://www.etickets.to/buy/?e=2364