The other day, I was having a conversation with one of our clients. She is the Managing Director of a wonderful consultancy that helps organisations with their systems and processes, particularly with Food Standards and Quality Management Systems. She has a blog on a topic that is close to what we will discuss today.
We got to talking about effectiveness and efficiency; two words that are often used interchangeably by many of us. But they’re very different; here’s how:
According to the folks at InsightSquared, “Effectiveness speaks to being adequate enough to accomplish a purpose, and producing the intended result.” Efficiency, however, speaks to “performance in the best possible manner, making good use of time and resources.”
Thus, I can be efficient in managing the time and the tools to do a digital marketing service but I can still be ineffective when I look at the metrics. Conversely, I can be effective in my provided solution but also be inefficient because I have failed to manage my resources; like people, time or money.
Let’s use another marketing example, because we are, after all, a marketing blog.
If we have an agency team that is responsible for putting together deliverables for a campaign, we can be very effective in delighting our client and producing what they want, when they want it. But, like many agencies, we may have holes in our system that make us less efficient. We may not be managing our staff and contractors well and we may be leaning too much on our people resource; investing too much in salaries for staff and outside contractors who may not be efficient in their duties either. So, in that case, the clients are happy but agency costs would be too high. That would affect our longevity as a firm and will eventually affect our staff, which might also then affect the level of work we are able to put out.
Or, sometimes teams are very focused on the efficiency of their digital marketing practice; posting on time, with crazy creativity. Yet, many fail to look hard enough at the metrics, not iterating when necessary and not embracing agility.
That’s one of the reasons we are so specific in our approach here at Match Sync. Often in the marketing world we can be so focused on making clients happy that we don’t fine-tune our systems to ensure that we are efficient and we don't hone in on what effectiveness will look like. While we ultimately want clients to get what they want and be giddy with delight, we also want them to be comfortable in our efficiency while sharing the same goals.
Like most companies, we won’t be perfect but we’re focused on the journey.
If this is something that matters to you as a company, reach out to us.
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