Marketing performance measurement and management

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• A script has been used to generate a semi- automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for January 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review to aim for A class status. The article has already passed the GA class. Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks, Zithan ( talk) 07:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Brianboulton comments:

WP:JARGON says: "...most articles using academic or professional terms should contain more explanation at a more basic level than would be available in the typcal academic paper".

The problem with this article is that is generally written in exclusive language, and reads more like a business seminar paper, or the notes for a lecture to marketing people, than it does like a general encyclopedia article. It does not have the level of explanation suggested above, and is consequently hard to understand except for those who are well versed in the subject. An early example of what I refer to as exclusive language occurs in the lead:-

"It involves the creation a metrics framework to monitor marketing performance, and then develop and utilize marketing dashboards to manage marketing performance."

Metrics framework? Marketing dashboards? Without a knowledge of what these are, the sentence is meaningless. I have gone through the first main section (Data and analytics), and listed the problems that I find with it. These problems may be taken as typical for the article as a whole.

• The graphic, without explanation or description, is incomprehensible to non-marketing people
• Don't the first two sentences of this section say the same thing?
• "A consonance among..." A more common word such as "accord" or "harmony" migh be better than "consonance". Also, "among" is wrong when there are only two entities, in this case the marketing department and senior management. "Between" is correct.
• The phrase "that have to be collected" is unnecessary.
• Samples of business-speak needing explanantion: business-critical; actionable business insights; marketing eturn on investment (which later becomes "return on marketing investment".
• Example of an impenetrable sentence: "One of the most common uses of analytics that marketing performance management focuses on optimising marketing spend by using market mix models". It doesn't even seem grammatical.
• Sentence beginning "Consumer packaged goods industry..." needs to start with a definite article.
• "extensively uses this method" would read better as "uses this method extensively"
• "although" means "despite which...", and I'm not sure it is the right word in "although it is now being adopted..."
• "and so on..." is informal and definitely non-encyclopedic
• "The concepts and tools of a marketing mixed modelling..."? "of marketing mixed modelling" OK, or possibly "of a marketing mixed model", but not as you have it.

Similar sorts of criticisms could be made of later sections. I think the general task is to work through the prose and try and simplify it, with fewer "professional" words and more explanation. As it stands it might do fine in a professional journal, but it needs a different sort of presentation here. Brianboulton ( talk) 15:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Thank you Brian for reviewing it. I will work on simplifying the prose. Regards, Zithan ( talk) 11:37, 22 January 2009 (UTC) reply

Comments by Doncram Along the same lines:

• Lead currently states a goal to be to optimize the return of investment (ROI) of marketing. There's a well-developed understanding in the field of finance (and understood elsewhere in the larger field of business) that it is not ROI which you want to maximize, you want to maximize Net Present Value (perhaps also taking into account real option values). Anyhow, if two mutually exclusive investments return 20% and 25% in ROI, but the first provides 1 million dollars of NPV, while the second provides just $100, you borrow money to invest in the lower ROI one and become a millionaire. So, I don't think maximizing (optimizing?) the ROI of marketing would be the currently proper term in an academic marketing journal article either, and i further think it is not the right term to use here.
• Also in the lead: "Three elements play a critical role in managing marketing performance—data, analytics, and metrics". That is a quote from the article, not a quote from someone else saying it. I think it is arbitrary and non-encyclopedic to say that there are exactly 3 elements that are critical. I am sure that there are many ways to partition up all aspects of the subject into more than 3 "critical" parts, and bet you could come up with 3 critical parts of each of the 3 parts you have listed. It would perhaps be encyclopedic to say something like: Aberdeen consultants report that focusing management attention on just three elements of managment marketing performance seems to be more helpful than other approaches which they have tried in improving clients' performance. (Assuming you had a source supporting that.)
• "One of the core methodologies to measure the effectiveness of marketing is the collection of appropriate data." Methodologies seems to be wrong word. Sentence parses to "one of the methodologies is collection". Or perhaps you mean to describe one particular methodology of data collection?

Hope these few further remarks help. doncram ( talk) 18:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC) reply