Objectives like increasing customer awareness and engagement sound good on paper, but if you can't measure outcomes how can you effectively determine if you're meeting those goals or not? Here are 5 simple steps to follow to set up a marketing measurement plan.
Step One – Plan what to measure in advance
Teams use a number of tools to promote their services, programs, and/or ideas, and tracking results can sometimes be time consuming and difficult if not pre-planned. Your measurement plan should connect directly to your business goals and objectives. And allgood measurement plans start with S.M.A.R.T goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based).
e.g. We want to increase awareness of our cause by increasing traffic to our website by 5% by the end of the 2019 fiscal year.
Step Two - Connect your actions directly to your goals / objectives
As teams flesh out the specific actions that will achieve their overall goals they may set monthly or quarterly Key Performance Indicators and even have specific “action” measures to determine which channel or element is performing better.
e.g. To increase website traffic by 5% we will:
- Improve our search engine optimization (free) rankings by...
- Improve our search engine marketing (paid) rankings by....
- Improve our email click-thru rates by...
- Increase our social media referral traffic / clicks by...
As teams begin, I recommend they set quarterly KPIs based upon the historical data they do have and their best guesstimates from industry averages.
Step 3 – Map out your actions for each customer segment
Now that the team has clear goals and actions mapped out they can refine their measures by reflecting on a typical consumer’s journey. For example, a first-time visitor who discovers your website may have different information needs that a regular / returning visitor. A loyal customer may need far less information than a prospective customer who does not yet know much about your brand. Most companies use the A.I.D.A model to further flesh out their action plan and guide customers through the steps / information you have mapped out. For example:
- Awareness: # of customers who opened my email / read my post.
- Interest: # of customers who click thru to the website landing page / liked my post
- Desire: # of customers who watched the video on the landing page / shared the post
- Action: # of customers who register / donate / buy / comment positively / etc.
New Customer / Acquisition |
Returning Customer / Retention |
| A – Awareness
I – Interest D – Desire A - Action |
A – Acknowledge D – Dialogue I – Incentivize A - Activate |
Step 4 – Set up the tracking / reporting
Now with a detailed action plan, the team can go ahead and set up the tracking required to easily report on the relevant results. If teams are not managing the Google Analytics accounts directly, they can now meet with IT to request the appropriate metrics be automatically emailed to them. If they want to use vanity URLs for offline marketing (e.g. a completely customizable short branded link or a sign) or create a campaign UTM / URL tracker so Google provides more finely tuned tracking of social media posts or emails, you can organize any support you need to create these well in advance and test them to ensure they work.
Step 5 – Step back to consider annual benchmarks
If you work on a large team, now you can also connect with others to see what overall tracking teams may want to set up for year-over-year comparisons. Mapping out the specific goals, objectives, KPIs and measures will ensure your plan is tailored to your needs, but you may also find it helpful to consider these 3 common marketing measures.
- Customer Life-Time Value
This is the revenue a customer will generate for your organization during their relationship with you. Non-profits with monthly giving campaigns for example may find this an important measure as they focus on acquisition, retention and upselling. Retailers with customer loyalty programs are also often focused on CLTV. It will also be important to consider customer churn – or how often you lose customers vs. gain new ones.
Average Transaction Value X Average Purchase Frequency X Average Customer Tenure = CLTV
- Net Promoter Score
This measures the willingness of a customer to recommend your company to others. To measure you must ask customers at EVERY interaction (touchpoint) - Would you recommend us to your friends?
Use a Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
To measure you evaluate:
What percentage gave you a 9 or a 10? = Promoters
Ignore those that gave you an 8 or a 7 = fence sitters
What percentage gave you a 6 or less? = Detractors
Net Promoter Score = % Promoters - % Detractors
- Marketing ROI
MROI can be tough to measure as you consider what to attribute to increased sales / donations. As you improve your measurement plans, you will be able to set more detailed goals and conversions in programs such as Google Analytics to more accurately calculate. For example, do we assume a returning customer is a result of our efforts? If we introduced a new product or channel, did we just switch customers from one to another and not increase overall sales / donations at all? For every major marketing activity teams will be evaluating data before, during and after activities for every part of the marketing mix in order to gather the insights into which efforts bring the greatest returns. Four common methods to consider in your evaluations are:
- Single attribution: The last touchpoint with the consumer is attributed to the sale (e.g. opened email, visited website = website resulted in a sale)
- Multi-touch attribution: Various touch points contribute to a sale and each is assigned a value. e.g. opened email (10%), visited website (90%)
- Test groups: Control groups are used to help measure effectiveness.
- Pre/Post testing: Customers are surveyed for example before and after a market effort to evaluate hard-to-measure impacts such as changes in attitudes or customer satisfaction.
Questions? Here's where you can get in touch. http://www.brandrewire.ca/contact-brand-re-wire/