Subscribe Did a colleague forward this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy. News & Events Consulting to Management review of Marketplace Masters (PDF), September 2005 (C2M site) Suzanne Lowe spoke at the Legal Sales and Service Organization Raindance Conference in June 2005. See the LSSO Web site for details on the conference. CMO Magazine article Perception is Reality June 2005 Kennedy Information's Consultants News article How To Adjust To Marketplace Shifts Successfully (paid subscription required, see July CN archives) July 2005 Recent Issues Methods of Measuring Marketing ROI October 2005 Does Your Firm Measure Up? September 2005 Don't Bore Me With Your Blog August 2005 You can order Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your favorite online bookseller. For bulk sales please contact CEO-READ.

The Marketplace Master^TM is a monthly email publication on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.

Greetings

By now, you have probably seen the invitation to participate in our latest survey: Marketing Effectiveness for Professional Firms.

If you are a senior-level marketer in a professional service firm, I hope you'll take the time (about 20 minutes) to complete the survey and share your valuable insights with me.

In this month's newsletter I'd like to share with you a case study on ACNielsen's marketing measurement program.

Our past two months’ discussion about measuring marketing has focused on what many consider to be “traditional” marketing initiatives. The reason why I selected ACNielsen as a case study in my book Marketplace Masters is because of its broader and deeper approach to evaluating effectiveness.

Indeed, too many measurement initiatives fail or are discontinued because of professional service firms’ rather piecemeal approach to assessing effectiveness. ACNielsen’s senior management realized the importance of the sequential nature of effectiveness; that employees’ ability to be effective can be tracked all the way through to clients’ achievement of success.

So I hope you’ll read this month’s newsletter with the words “integration” running through your mind.

Suzanne Lowe
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win
President, Expertise Marketing, LLC

ACNielsen Case Study

	Our clients spend large sums of money with ACNielsen each and every year. It is very important that we provide them with a healthy ROI . . . it’s what they expect from us. And, in order to do that effectively, we track progress on our internally-developed ROI measures. This commitment to evaluation and measurement has had a tremendous impact on our market leadership position. Tom Markert, SVP Global Chief Marketing/Client Service Officer of VNU & ACNielsen Marketing Information

ACNielsen, one of the most respected names in the business of market research, information and analysis, used five critical measurement processes to help significantly increase its strategic focus and market leadership in its sector. These processes include:

• Measuring employee satisfaction
• Measuring client satisfaction
• Adopting a time-tracking approach
• Developing a set of quality measures
• Creating and using a set of 25 internal productivity metrics to help the firm improve the way it manages itself for the benefit of the firm’s clients.

At the time this case study was published in Marketplace Masters in 2004 their measurement program had been in place for seven years. Global operating income had more than tripled, net income had nearly quintupled, and return on equity and return on assets had more than tripled.

Read the complete ACNielsen Case Study (PDF)

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