Measuring the dollar value and effectiveness of marketing and advertising is something every business owner should be doing. There are six common marketing strategies that every board, chief executive and marketing manager needs to consider in order for their brand to succeed in today’s complex media and marketing environment.
They are as follows:
1. Past performance is often the best way to predict future success.
Measuring what helped past success is now a sophisticated science. Research fails to allow such robust insight, yet an empirical understanding of the recent past is a great indicator of future potential outcomes.
2. Measure your results within the market context.
Your internal budgets and targets are meaningless unless they can be measured against the latest market dynamics and the activity of your competitors. Many companies celebrate reaching sales targets which actually amount to a decline in share of a fast growing market.
3. Know what influences the volume and value of your sales.
Often marketing performance targets measure sales volume and/or value, revenue or even profit. Conflicting objectives and reward structures across business functions make the consistent management of the trade off between volume and value impossible. Marketing needs to be held accountable for the delivery of both metrics.
4. Weigh up the different responses of existing customers and new customers.
Selling to customers with no past experience of your brand requires a different level of effort and investment to coax them into the market or away from your competitors. You need to know what it is that motivates customer spending decisions within your category. This will help you see and understand how, where and why your customers spend.
5. Learn how to marry science with art.
Anyone who thinks creating famous marketing tactics or TV commercials are the sole measure of success, has been asleep for the past decade. The accurate measurement of what worked well in the past for your brand needs to be incorporated into the creation of new ideas to extend your market, brand, advertising and media success.
6. Make sure the interests of all stakeholders are considered.
Internal marketing teams and external agencies need to work closely together to help deliver business outcomes. Too often internal teams and external agencies are remunerated in ways which drive decisions that are inconsistent with the achievement of the best possible outcome for the business.
– Tony Davis is a director of The Quantium Group www.quantium.com
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