Touch points, transactions and leads…oh, my! When it comes to metrics, how do marketers determine what matters most? Make no mistake about it – better measurement is critical to marketing success. But even the most seasoned of marketers struggle to make sense of the metrics that matter – and the ones that don’t.
Entrepreneurs, business owners and marketing, advertising and public relations professionals alike have a wealth of important and individual metrics at their disposal. Measuring those metrics is both easy and effective, as long as you already know what you’re looking for. Still, most marketers struggle to see the big picture.
- How can we make sense of today’s complex customer journey?
- What are the core principles of better metric measurement?
- How can the collective principles of better measurement improve campaign success?
In this guide, we’ll explore the answers to these important questions.
Make a Sound Investment
From connecting with a customer to finding a quality lead and making a sale, marketers must deliver the right message at each critical touch point of the customer journey. Making sense of the complex customer journey requires a sound measurement investment. It takes a combination of strategy, money and resources to make the most of touch points. The consequences of a poor measurement investment range from wasted money and resources to alienating the customer. A sound measurement investment is critical – and it begins with a strong foundation.
Build a Strong Foundation
A strong measurement foundation is the key to understanding the interconnected touch points across the customer journey – and making the most of them. It trumps all other priorities including your creative work. Just like building a house, laying your measurement foundation first promotes success from campaign launch to completion. There are four core principles of a strong measurement foundation.
1. Choose the right metrics.
Before launching a campaign, identify the clear metrics you want to measure. Better measurement means choosing the right metrics fresh from the gates to set your campaign up for the win. How do you define the right metrics? The key is aligning your relevant metrics with your real business objectives, revenues and profits.
For most marketers, the most relevant metrics and benchmarks are to create brand awareness, generate leads and drive sales. Once you choose your metrics, define your best market channels – from TV and social to paid organic search – and measure lower-tier, proxy key performance indicators including leads visits and brand lifts. Also, determine your most effective measurement tools from web and mobile app analytics to CRMs, brand surveys and more. Choosing the right metrics, channels and tools promotes better measurement from start to finish.
2. Value your best customers.
Your new philosophy for better measurement is simple: customers before transactions. Who you measure is just as important as what you measure. Your customer’s lifetime value is critical to your campaign success. Measuring transactions alone is often a dead-end when searching for your best customers. Instead, model the lifetime value of your customers.
20% of customers drive 80% of profits: it’s among the most basic theories in the marketing industry. Smart marketers examine that critical 20% and ask the following questions:
- How did we acquire the customer?
- How can we find more customers like them?
- How can we keep them as customers?
Focus on the right customers – the high lifetime value customers that boost revenue – and shift your strategy away from acquiring the short-lived customers who end up costing you more money than you earn from their business. This core principle of better metric measurement holds the key to increased ROI.
3. Map the entire customer journey.
Every touch point across the customer journey plays a valuable role. For better measurement, identify each touch point, each role, as one of two things: successful to your marketing campaign or insignificant. Smart marketers measure and value all touch points not only within channels but across them.
Can you successfully map the entire customer journey – from display ads seen last month to a search ad clicked this morning – and all the way to conversion? If you can, then you can reap the rewards of smarter investment decisions and improved customer messaging at every critical touch point.
4. Prove your marketing impact.
Choosing the right metrics, valuing your best customers and mapping the entire customer journey – these core principles of better measurement are only the beginning. Perhaps the most important principle of all is proving your marketing impact.
While many marketers base their decisions on correlations, smart marketers do so based on measured impact. Controlled experimentation is the key to proving this essential impact.
For every market spend change, determine exactly what happened given the change (and what would not have happened without it). Determining the incremental value of each of media investment provides the competitive edge marketers need to launch successful campaigns.
Putting It All Together
In the end, better measurement boosts campaign effectiveness to promote a better return on your marketing investment. Learn to make smarter investment decisions, start with a strong foundation and follow the core principles of better measurement. Your new measurement-focused marketing strategy will take your campaign to unimaginable heights.
Linx is more…
Thank a marketing consultancy.
More than “marketing advice” – Linx can test, pull back and adjust, perform risk/reward calculations and implement a plethora of our own market-driven business strategies. Contact us today for a market driven business strategy to promote 1,000X ROI.
