In your 2010 marketing planning, measurement isn’t a nice thing to do; it is an essential thing to do. People in the executive suite throughout organizations are talking about driving ROI, delivering ROI, and measuring ROI. In these economic times, you can't escape it.
As you plan, incorporate both qualitative and quantitative methods to measure the effectiveness of your marketing programs. For example, you could look at the "health" of your prospect database and at how you are advancing conversations with your targeted prospects. In business-to-business enterprise selling, you can’t deliver your message to a prospect in a five-minute phone call or a one-hour sales visit; you have to deliver it over a series of conversations and continue your dialogue by utilizing a combination of electronic marketing, social media and phased e-mail campaigns that are highly relevant.
Are you appropriately leveraging technology to supplement the regular reach-outs from sales representatives? In addition to providing sales support from industry events, local seminars, advertising, and public relations, also monitor your database health, Web stats, time on site, and where visitors are spending time with you in an interactive dialogue with the company.
How do you plan to measure whether your campaigns are working? You'll want to know whether people are clicking through and spending time at another part of your site, which can lead to a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that you brought them to your site; the bad news is that they are not moving on to the next step. Plan to measure how many sales leads turn into visits, how many visits turn into proposals, and how many proposals turn into sales. This allows you to apply some method of accountability to every program.
It is important to have clear goals that are accepted across the organization. Once you have clear goals, you have to realize that technology is not a cure all. You have to be realistic about what you can measure, how you can measure it, and whether it is timely enough to measure at all. It is great to say that you want to achieve something, but you have to make sure you have the technology tools you need to measure program effectiveness. You also have to make sure you will receive the results early enough to help you adapt. You may have to take an extra step and circle back to the cross-functional people you are working with to adjust how you are going to use your measurement yardstick.
It is important to have individual ROI goals for each project. You can find a measurable component in every program. One of the ramifications of not effectively measuring accountability is risking the marketing function being relegated to the tactical sidelines versus acting as a critical strategic partner in shaping the company’s success.
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