Focus: Marketing Measurement Systems and Return on Investment.
1. Implement Marketing Measurement Systems that will allow your company to:
· Plan
· Implement
· Track
· Measure
· Analyze
· Make informed decisions on how to spend your marketing budget.
Then start the cycle again for each marketing initiative. Measure the Return on Investment for all marketing initiatives.
2. Implement consistent tracking systems and equal measurement systems for the different types of initiatives. Make all marketing activities link to a consistent performance metric. Track all not some of your initiatives. There are creative ways to measure broadcast, direct mail, internet etc. Even if you have multiple marketing initiatives at the same time, there are ways to attribute the return to the initiative that drove the order.
3. Define the ultimate objective for every marketing initiative: 10 orders, 50 orders, 1000 orders etc. A new customer = new orders. Measure every initiative to the objective and the objective would have been set by the desired ROI.
4. In the Analysis phase, make sure that all of the metrics of the marketing initiative are taken into consideration. For example, if one campaign through direct mail offers a “25% off “and another campaign via broadcast offers “Free Shipping with order”, the response may differ greatly based on the customers’ perceived value of the offer.
5. Establish a Reporting System that is available on a monthly basis for all stakeholders in your business. These marketing measurements should be reviewed against budget objectives. The finance and marketing organizations should work together to ensure agreement. Plans should be made in a timely manner to correct the course if needed.