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I was speaking with a friend of mine in marketing yesterday when the subject of measurement came up. I mentioned how my marketing classes in my MBA program had made marketing seem more like an art than a science. Much of that is because the effects of marketing can be difficult to measure.
Businessmen can, for example, calculate fairly closely how much their profits will increase if they sell one hundred more units per month. They can predict the general effect of a merger on their stock price. But it can be very difficult to predict the bottom line effects of an advertising campaign.
Part of this is because marketing deals with influencing the emotions and minds of human beings who, by nature, do not always make predictable, logical choices. We are emotional creatures, subject to many disparate and sometimes conflicting factors when making choices. Yet while the choices of individuals can be unpredictable, the choices of crowds are less so.
It is possible to create marketing that can be measurable. One of the most common is the "mention this ad and receive a discount" approach. A variation of this has been used to good effect by Bill Greenway at ABU Games. He works to make his advertisements so memorable that his customers will mention them whether they get a discount or not.
Another approach is to target a specific result. For example, if your business is currently receiving ten new leads per week, target your marketing's call-to-action to result in leads. If the number of leads increases during the marketing cycle you can gain hard figures that can be used to measure the marketing return on investment (ROI). You can also establish benchmarks against which future marketing campaigns can be measured against.
This of course assumes that you are gathering business metrics to begin with--and you should be. If a particular aspect of your business is worth the effort to improve, it is worth the effort to measure it. Good metrics help you understand your business and can help you measure the ROI of any effort you undertake, not just marketing.
It can be easy to rush into marketing. We all know we need to do it. Some of us even enjoy doing it. But whether we are eager to get to it because we love it or because we want to get it over with, it is still worth the time to consider how you will measure the effectiveness of your efforts. Marketing is, to a degree, an art. It takes good measurements to help you determine what works and what doesn't.
For more info: For more information and perspectives on measuring marketing effectiveness, consider these links:
Measuring effectiveness of marketing is complex, vital task
Measuring marketing effectiveness is hard...
Kpis To Measure Marketing Effectiveness
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