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The final part of this Do or Die Marketing Plan deals with measurement and application of learnings.

We all know the famous quote by US retailer John Wanamaker “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Well, it’s a cop out!

Marketing is an investment. It should not simply be viewed as a cost.

As with any investment, your marketing has a duty to give you a return. The only way to know whether your marketing is performing or not is to measure it. As you measure, you gain intelligence on which marketing activities work for your brand and which don’t. Using this information to change your marketing plans as you go along will make your marketing work harder and harder and increase your ROI.

Here are some pointers on what you should be measuring and how:

1. The overall return you should expect from marketing can be calculated by taking the lifetime value of a customer less the cost of your marketing activities (remember to include your time and your staff’s time here!), divided it by the cost of marketing and multiplied by 100. So, if your marketing activity gets you 10 new customers, worth €2,000 each and your marketing campaign cost €5,000 your return on investment would be 300% . It’s a good idea to set a target ROI as part of your marketing planning.
2. Log every marketing activity that you undertake. Keep a record of how it worked, how much it cost and what results were achieved. Results can include responses, additions to database, sharing
3. Before you book paid for advertising, plan how you will measure it. Make this part of the negotiation with the media title. Integrate direct response into ads, with individual tracking codes to identify specific media titles. Consider including QR codes, coupons or special offers tailored to your campaign.
4. Invest in measuring brand awareness. Measure before, during and after campaigns run. This is a very worthwhile exercise that is not practiced very much at present. Brand awareness is a hugely important part of the marketing cycle leading to sales. Speak to a research provider to find out what’s involved.
5. Measure brand perception – another neglected measurable of marketing effectiveness. Do you know what your customers think of your brand? You need to find out. If it doesn’t tally with your brand values or with your offering, then you need to change it. One marketing campaign can make big changes to how a brand is perceived. A good example of this what Old Spice achieved with their advertising, changing the brand completely for a whole new generation.

How do you measure your marketing?

(pic : www.fyrepel.com)