The digital economy generates masses of data – and consequently a lot of complexity, which makes measuring marketing effects a guessing game. So how do you cut through the clutter to see whether your marketing efforts actually align with your business goals? How can you measure and optimise marketing impact in the digital paradigm?
With the right tools and processes, measuring marketing effects and proving impact does not have to be complicated, although it is crucial that you lay adequate foundations first.
We all know the basics of planning a campaign. However, the hows often take precedence over the whys. Reflecting on the whys is a much better foundation on which to build your campaign. Why are you launching this campaign? To what purpose? Is it to build the brand, to inform or to sell? Who is your target group? If you have no clear idea of the whys, you will struggle to identify the pertinent KPIs. In other words, how is completely irrelevant if you forget to ask why.
It is also important that your KPIs are just that, i.e. metrics by which you can measure the effect of your marketing efforts. Sales, leads and traffic are good examples of KPIs that you should measure. Reach and frequency are good examples of media metrics but they are not the goal. They are rather instruments that you can use to achieve your goals.
Much of the groundwork may seem obvious to most marketers, but it is vital. You cannot properly measure the impact of your campaigns if you do not know what to measure and why.
Once the groundwork is complete, you can develop content, activities and communication. Each of these elements should align with the most important drivers in the market. Resist any temptation to launch a campaign for a predetermined period. It will be costly. Monitor your campaigns while they are active and optimise them accordingly. Monitoring perception data is particularly crucial. You should check that your target audience perceives your message as intended.
While brand value is generally regarded as a slow-moving KPI, every campaign has a direct impact on your brand, either positive or negative. For this reason, it is important to track how your marketing activities affect your brand in both the long and short term. Both campaign tracking and brand tracking allow you to evaluate your campaigns individually and learn which aspects were effective and which have to be improved on in future campaigns.
A powerful marketing intelligence tool allows you to amalgamate all your campaigns and data, and convert the data into information that is easy to digest and understand. Penetrace allows you to not only optimise your campaigns, but also perform modelling. You gain a better understanding of what drives your brand, traffic and sales. Measuring marketing effectiveness does not have to be complex; it just needs to be systematized.