What’s your recipe for marketing success? One pound of strategy, six ounces of targeted media, two cups of breakthrough creative, three tablespoons of sheer luck and a pinch of Executive gut feel. Sound familiar? What may have worked in the past, simply doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time for a new recipe. Marketing is maturing into a results-driven discipline. No longer can Marketing Executives rely purely on their past experience, gut feel and intuition. ROI needs to be a fundamental ingredient in Marketing as it is in Finance, Sales, Product Development or any other strategic department in the organization.

The issue is clearly in front of us: Marketing needs to prove its worth to the organization—to earn the respect of the CEO and CFO, to justify budgets based on returns and to nurture profitable relationships with customers and partners. In other words, it’s time for Marketing to become more accountable. And for many Marketing Executives, this issue is front and center.

The CMO Council's recent report, “Measures + Metrics”, reveals that the measurement of marketing performance is a top priority for many Marketing Executives. However, fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed have developed meaningful, comprehensive metrics for their marketing organizations. So, why isn’t this shift happening faster? What are the obstacles and challenges we’re facing? According to research conducted by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research, the adoption of ROI measurement in marketing is easier said than done. Their research showed that almost 50 percent of the CMOs they surveyed felt “ROI data is hard to obtain” and more than 40 percent said “it isn’t granular enough”.

In order to add ROI to your recipe for success, it helps to organize your efforts around these four areas: organizational mindset, optimization process, key metrics and technology.