The importance of MDF reporting

I was recently asked to take part in a Marketing Expert Session to share my opinions and thoughts on the importance of reporting on marketing development funds.  It goes without saying that you would provide reporting for all activities funded by MDF however there are trends. From our experience of working with multiple technology vendors, we know reporting is still very important for demonstrating success and for future decision making.

Focus on the output not the process
MDF isn’t always treated with the importance it deserves and in some cases the process takes over from the output. What I mean is that we often see a lot of time being spent on following the process and complying with each step but then see little focus on the important part which is ‘what difference has this made? What revenue has this driven?’
 
It’s easy for MDF to simply become a process and for the reporting a tick box exercise; something that needs to be done to make a claim but don’t lose sight of the actual impact an activity is making. As a vendor you want reporting that reflects reality and allows you to track the true ROI, not just a list of spurious numbers.
 
Report on what’s important 
Being able to measure an activity is one thing but being able to see if it actually works is something else.
 
People use the terms POE and POP interchangeably, but they are two very different things. POE is something that demonstrates an activity has taken place, this is arguably a box ticking activity. It’s the ‘here’s a list of the 100 people who attended our webinar’ very rarely is there a £ value attributed to the metric.  You can’t measure ROI from POE.
 
POP on the other hand is reporting to demonstrate how well the activity performed and the impact on revenue might not be released for 6,8 or 12 months after execution.
 
We have a client who is running an MDF funded content syndication campaign with a partner. The vendor doesn’t want to know about the 500 raw leads the campaign generates, they want to know the figure of qualified leads that comes as a result of the prospecting by the tele marketing team.  And for that reason….
 
Deal registration
Has become even more important than ever as a method of tracking the impact of an activity. Another Yellow Spider client requests POE immediately after the activity is executed but a criteria of claiming their MDF is that the partner must deal reg all leads generated as a result of ongoing nurture. The vendor wants the partner to take responsibility for lead nurture and to own the potential pipeline it represents. They want to know what revenue the activity has driven, that’s how they measure ROI.

Some activities are easier to measure than others
But that doesn’t mean you should neglect the difficult ones, you just need to be smarter at how you measure and report.
 
We believe it’s about guiding people to what good looks like and that depends on the activity type. If you take content syndication as an example;  if this is something you offer as a service on your marketing automation platform then it’s easy to execute and measure. If you don’t then the partner will use MDF to fund an activity with a third party, that activity is then out of your control and not as easy for you to measure but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
 
Be clear on what good looks like. All partners are different and a successful campaign varies depending on the activity type and what you’re aiming to achieve.  Have simple guidelines, set expectations and be clear on what you are measuring.
 
Yellow Spider has a long history in developing and managing MDF and deal registration programs for vendors. If you would like more information on how we can help your program run more efficiently, please contact us. 

CONTACT OUR TEAM

MEET THE AUTHOR: LOUISE BROOKER
Louise is CEO and owner of Yellow Spider. Her background includes B2B professional services Director working, with some of the largest tech corporations in the world, and 10 years as Head of Marketing at an IT distribution and integration vendor.  Louise is a subject matter expert on all things Partner Program and Channel related.