Gazelles, Lions, and MarTech Benchmarking

You may already know this famous quote:

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running."

The quote rings true and often has business leaders nodding in agreement during strategy sessions.

In case you are wondering what gazelles and lions have to do with marketing technology, consider RSG's RealScore Effectiveness Model that lets you "benchmark against competitors and visualize where you need to go" and the connection should be clear. 

Effectiveness Models, like all good benchmarking tools, serve an important purpose — they help you figure out where you currently stand on certain key parameters. Armed with that information, you can close any gap with competition.

The Marketing Automation Effectiveness model (try it here for free) is a diagnostic across four foundational areas: your internal expertise to harness marketing technologies, how broadly your are applying such technology, process maturity, and systems sophistication.

Take a look at this graph that plots an enterprise relative to the best-in-class and average organizations across these dimensions.  

Marketing Automation Effectiveness Model Score

Figure: RealScore Marketing Automation Effectiveness Model Example. This particular organization is above average in certain areas and lagging in some other areas. 

Let's return to the African aphorism. If you think about it, to survive, a gazelle does not have to necessarily outrun the lion — it only has to outrun the slower gazelles in its peer group. 

Similarly, you can also calibrate your marketing maturity journey relative to the best-in-class, or relative to the peer group as your business requirements dictate and set its direction and pace.

With the RealScore diagnostic, the CMO and the MarTech leaders can better prioritize and choose to invest in areas which provide the maximum bang for the buck. 


Our customers say...

"Finally, a review of MarTech suites that takes a critical look at these tools. I found it essential to understanding the promise of these solutions -- as well as some important tool and vendor weaknesses."


Alexander Deligtisch, Founder, Spliteye Multimedia

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