Marketing and its discontents: the challenges of achieving and communicating ROI

Chasefive Management

The Need for Formal Marketing Planning Methodologies

Marketing planning and management have become increasingly complex in the modern business environment. The inability of organizations to execute their strategies successfully is a cause for concern, with the statistics painting a grim picture. According to data published in The Balanced Scorecard by David Norton and Robert Kaplan, ninety percent of organizations need to execute their strategies successfully, including marketing plans. Additionally, a well-known study published by the online marketing publication Search Engine Journal revealed that fifty percent of small businesses still need to attempt to create a marketing plan. These statistics indicate a need for more confidence in formal marketing planning methodologies and in the ability of the business to implement the actions of a plan.

Marketing planning and management involve controlling the entire marketing organization environment, from planning to execution, management, and analysis. It is a mission that spans multiple and diverse disciplines, and the breadth of knowledge that the marketing manager needs to grasp is not for the faint-hearted. For example, the marketing manager must master concepts of consumer psychology, budget management and financial planning, technical channels and software implementation know-how, people management and team building, legal and consumer regulations, advanced project management techniques, and understanding of visual and written communication best practice techniques, and more.

The Complexity of Marketing Planning and Management

With such a diverse range of disciplines involved, it is no wonder that marketing planning and management can be a highly volatile project. A series of planning calculations and decisions depend on the interaction of internal and external factors that are often outside the control of the business and not easily predictable. Therefore, it is essential to have a framework that can help rationalize the marketing planning process.

At the heart of marketing planning and management is creating and executing a marketing plan successfully. The two aspects, plan and execution, are linked – one cannot succeed without the other. A marketing plan is a comprehensive document that outlines the business's overall marketing strategy, including its goals, target market, competitive analysis, tactics, and budget. In addition, it provides a roadmap for the marketing team to follow, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same objectives.

The Link Between Plan and Execution in Marketing

The first step in creating a marketing plan is to define the business's goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). They should also align with the organization's overall mission and objectives. The next step is to identify the target market. The target market is the group of people that the business is trying to reach with its marketing efforts. Finally, the marketing team should research to understand the target market's needs, preferences, and behaviors.

The third step is to conduct a competitive analysis. The marketing team should identify the business's key competitors and analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). This analysis will help the marketing team identify gaps in the market that the business can exploit.

The fourth step is to develop marketing tactics. Marketing tactics are the specific actions that the marketing team will take to achieve the business's marketing goals. These tactics can include advertising, promotions, public relations, events, social media, content marketing, and more.

The final step is to develop a budget. The budget should include all the costs associated with the marketing plan, including salaries, advertising expenses, promotional expenses, and more. The budget should be realistic and align with the organization's financial resources.

Once the marketing plan is created, the marketing team must execute it successfully. Execution involves implementing the tactics outlined in the marketing plan and monitoring their effectiveness. The marketing team should use metrics to measure the success of each tactic and adjust the plan as needed.

Execution of the Marketing Plan and Metrics for Success

In conclusion, marketing planning and management have become increasingly complex in the modern business environment. The inability of organizations to execute their strategies successfully is a cause for concern. A marketing plan is a comprehensive document that outlines the business's overall marketing strategy, including its goals, target market, competitive analysis, tactics, and budget.

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Understanding the Marketing KPI Divide: Why Production-Level Metrics Don’t Translate for Business Leaders

By Chasefive Management • October 30, 2025

The modern marketing landscape is rich with data. Teams can track campaign clicks, bounce rates, and email opens with precision; yet business leaders still question whether marketing truly drives growth. This disconnect often stems from a gap between production-level KPIs, granular measures used by marketing teams, and business leadership metrics, which focus on strategy, commercial outcomes, and long-term impact. The Leadership Challenge: Relevancy in Marketing KPIs Problems arise when senior leadership misinterprets or undervalues marketing KPIs . Executives often want to see how marketing contributes to strategic goals, but when presented with overly granular metrics, they disengage. Misalignment of Metric Relevance Leadership Focus: The C-suite prioritizes impact metrics such as customer lifetime value, market share growth, or marketing ROI. Marketer Focus: Teams look at tactical measures like CPC, bounce rates, and engagement. The Result: When operational data is given to executives expecting strategic insight, clarity is lost. CPC means little to a CFO concerned with revenue growth. Lack of Trust and Strategic Disconnect Mistrust at the Top: Studies show that nearly 80% of CEOs lack trust in their marketing departments. Much of this distrust comes from poor alignment in metrics. Structural Failures: If strategic goals are not translated into meaningful KPIs, marketing execution becomes scattered. Resource Misallocation: Marketers waste an average of 26% of budgets on ineffective channels when metrics fail to reflect business priorities. The FAPI Marketing Framework stresses tailored reporting, ensuring that each stakeholder, whether CEO, manager, or executive, receives metrics aligned with their role and level of decision-making. Management vs. Production Metrics: A Dual-Lane View To clarify this divide, the FAPI Framework illustrates how management-level metrics differ from production-level metrics and why both are essential.

How to make creativity operational within a performance-driven marketing framework

By Chasefive Management • October 19, 2025

In modern marketing, creativity and performance often seem at odds — one thrives on freedom, the other demands structure. Yet within the FAPI Marketing Framework , these two forces are intentionally designed to coexist. The Plan Master — the central leadership role in FAPI — is responsible for integrating creativity and innovation within a structured, data-driven system. This means ensuring that imaginative thinking is encouraged, but also anchored to commercial and strategic outcomes. In practice, the Production Executives (the creative and technical professionals who execute campaigns) must receive a clear and structured creative brief that defines the strategic intent, boundaries, and success metrics for their work. In FAPI terms, creativity doesn’t operate in chaos — it flourishes within a defined frame.

From Reporting to Prescriptive Analysis: Climbing the Marketing Intelligence Ladder

By Chasefive Management • October 3, 2025

Modern marketing teams sit on a mountain of data, yet turning that data into meaningful decisions remains a challenge. The FAPI Marketing Framework™ offers a clear path: move step by step from operational reporting to strategic prescriptive insights. The diagram below illustrates this progression, showing how marketing intelligence evolves in both complexity and value . The two axes of marketing intelligence The diagram is built on two dimensions: Vertical axis – Human vs. Automation: At the base, processes like reporting are automated and mechanical. As you climb, the need for human interpretation and judgment grows. Horizontal axis – Marketing Value: On the left, activities deliver limited business value by describing the past. Moving right, value increases as insights guide real-time actions and future strategy. Together, these axes show how marketing analysis matures from descriptive outputs to strategic decision-making tools .

Preparing Marketing Data for Decision Making

By Chasefive Management • September 24, 2025

In modern marketing, data is everywhere. But without structure and purpose, data is just noise. The real value comes when data is prepared in a way that makes it actionable, contextual, and aligned with responsibilities . As part of the Insights Module in the FAPI Marketing Framework , preparing marketing data for decision making ensures that teams move beyond collection and reporting, and instead focus on clarity, consistency, and meaning. Why data preparation matters. ensuring reliability and integrity The primary goal of marketing data preparation (covered in the Data Acquisition component of the Insights Module) is to ensure the marketing team has access to the right data, organized and ready for analysis. This is a critical leadership responsibility. Within the FAPI Marketing Framework, this responsibility falls to the Plan Master, who must establish benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) and clearly explain their purpose before execution begins. Getting this right avoids costly misalignment. When teams rely on inaccurate or poorly defined data, they risk making the wrong decisions and allocating resources inefficiently.

Marketing production hierarchy diagram, synchronising marketing execution through operational stages

By Chasefive Management • September 11, 2025

The FAPI Marketing Framework defines a clear hierarchy of terms, particularly regarding the relationship between the user journey, campaigns, and activities, ensuring a structured approach from strategic planning to tactical execution. This hierarchy is crucial for maintaining alignment between marketing efforts and overarching business strategy. 1. User Journey (Phases) The user journey (also called the user lifecycle) is the end-to-end path a person follows as they discover a product, service, or brand. It’s a foundational concept in the Architecture Module. Each company defines where the journey starts and ends, which affects how activities are built and monitored across the experience. Common phases used are: Awareness (or Reach): Getting the brand noticed. Validation (or Engage): Users validate claims and develop curiosity. Consideration: Users seek detailed information and explanations. Intent (or Engage): Users are motivated to take action. Commitment (or Conversion): Users make a purchase or tangible investment. Activation & Growth (or Nurture): Retain customers, drive repeat business, and increase lifetime 2. Campaigns Campaigns represent coordinated activities centred around a single concept and theme to form an integrated marketing communication. They sit within the user journey phases. In the FAPI Marketing Framework, "primary campaigns" are considered strategic and are defined in the Frame Module, making them mission-critical, non-negotiable, and long-term. Examples include Black Friday or Christmas campaigns for an e-commerce business, which are crucial for a large percentage of revenue. A campaign delivers a message created to communicate with potential customers at each phase of the customer journey. Production teams and agencies do not create these strategic campaigns; they receive campaign briefs from the strategic marketing leadership team . Campaigns are conceived at the strategy level, and a campaign conceived wrongly at this stage cannot be redeemed later.

Marketing Performance Leverage Effect. Modeling Synergy Across Marketing Channels

By Chasefive Management • September 3, 2025

The FAPI Marketing Framework—a comprehensive methodology for strategic marketing deployment—culminates in the Insights Module, which focuses on data-driven decision-making and continuous optimization. A critical concept in this module is the Marketing Leverage Effect , first introduced in the Architecture Module for forecasting campaign outcomes. The Leverage Effect highlights how multiple marketing activities across diverse channels interact and influence one another, producing a collective output greater than the sum of individual efforts. In the Insights Module, understanding the Leverage Effect is essential for accurately interpreting actual campaign performance, especially when assessing correlations between user-journey stages. By analyzing these interactions, organizations move beyond isolated metrics and derive actionable recommendations from a holistic view of how marketing investments work together.