INFORMA
Taming Creativity

Accountability Through Outcome-Based Marketing

Every year, businesses, professional practices and non-profits spend billions of dollars to influence customers, clients and other constituencies. Although many of the methods they use have proven successful, the question often remains, "what is the correlation between marketing programs and outcomes?"

INFORMA represents the first marketing organization devoted to applying tested methods of Outcome-based Marketing (OBM) principles to help businesses, professional practices, and non-profits achieve measurable marketing outcomes. INFORMA helps to tame the creative process through a unique APEC model of marketing management, where Certified Marketing Advisors (CMA’s) guide clients through the four critical stages of a program:

Assessment
The first stage in the APEC process is designed to assess the specific needs and project outcomes as well as continuously monitor progress toward these outcomes through Project Scorecardsª. We assess and prioritize the issues that are important to all stakeholders in your organization. This helps us to understand you, what opportunities exist in your marketplace, what your goals are, and to give us the foundation upon which we develop the strategies that will achieve your goals.

Planning
In the planning step we create a Marketing Action Planª (MAP) for the entire program and each project, defining strategies, tactics, budgets, and schedules. Specifically, we create a MAP for the entire project to get consensus on all of the projects and their relationship to the defined outcomes and goals. In addition, we create MAPs for each of the defined goals to ensure that each has a separate and distinct budget and implementation plan.

Execution
Creative and production resources are applied toward implementation during the execution component of the APEC process. Reporting is accomplished through a Marketing Monitor. One or more INFORMA GROUP partners implement each project, according to the MAPs created for each defined goal.

Coordination
This final stage ties the APEC process together. Management resources provide ongoing management and coordination of projects to achieve outcomes. An account manager is assigned to act as the primary contact with you to coordinate all activities and ensure that production and long-term implementation are professionally managed toward defined outcomes.

INFORMA applies proprietary principles and methods that integrate best practices in each of these stages, through three types of tools:

Marketing Action Plan
The MAP provides a clear blueprint for you at each stage of the project. A program MAP is prepared to establish the overall budget and schedule. Project MAP are created for each component of the program. Click here for an example.

Marketing Monitor
The Marketing Monitor is a report that is created during the production stage of a project, where materials are developed. It is designed to keep you abreast of what has been accomplished in each project.

Project Scorecard
The Project Scorecard is a report designed to help all stakeholders in your organization understand the degree to which projects are achieving outcomes.

INFORMA uses OBM tools and methods to enable clients to implement marketing projects that solve problems with higher levels of certainty, profitability and achievement. This is accomplished through an emphasis on the early stages of the process, specifically the Assessment and Planning stages. Thus the OBM process defines a client’s needs and desired outcomes and works "backwards" to arrive at solutions and metrics to achieve and measure success.