Marketing

As  I mentioned in a previous post, I led an advanced workshop on blogger relations at a local pr agency last week. A significant portion of the discussion centered on measurement which offered a great opportunity to revisit my thoughts on the topic. This post covers some of the material I prepared for the workshop.

Measurement isn’t magic.

It’s also not the same as monitoring even though the two activities use some of the same tools and we often confuse them. Monitoring is qualitative. It looks at outputs — media coverage, blog posts, microblog streams. It’s purpose is to evaluate attitudes. It’s extremely important at the outset of any marketing campaign and it can inform part of the measurement. But it is not sufficient in itself. A clip “book” and a calculation of reach (how many people were potentially exposed) is good information to have, but it only measures potential awareness.

And last I heard, no one ever went into business or ran for office to make folks more aware. The goal is to sell some product or win the election. A result.

Monitoring is “tell me everything you know.” Measurement asks specific questions. What was the result? Did we achieve our objectives?

Measurement must be based on a desired behavior or action, not attitude. Outcome, not output.

It is important to choose a measureable outcome, not some squishy thing that can’t be assessed by an action or behavior. The best measures are action or behavior: evaluate a product, intend to buy, recommend, purchase.

Unfortunately,  it isn’t always easy to link marketing campaigns directly to sales and other purchasing behaviors.  So we are often left with web metrics. Useful ones include unique visitors, referrers and path, time on site, and for blog-supported programs, inbound links and comments.

These indicators are better than nothing, but the key to success is to define the measurement at the outset, not as an afterthought and build it into your program.

For example, a dedicated microsite gives you a set of web metrics 100% related to the social media program. A coupon or online discount code lets you track campaign-driven sales. Even something as simple as a badge that customers can put on their own sites can provide some basic information.

The $25,000 question is, why aren’t more people measuring at this depth? Why are we still talking about awareness, not about purchase behaviors?

It’s a combination of fear and ignorance.

Let’s start with the ignorance. We aren’t asking the right questions. If you set your objective as something squishy like “raise awareness,” your measurable result will be equally squishy and irrelevant to business success. Fine and dandy if we could magically pull unlimited  money for marketing programs out of a hat. But we can’t.

This is where the fear comes in. We’re afraid that robust measurement may show that all that wonderful awareness didn’t translate into actual purchase. The more money we spent on the program, the more afraid we are. Safer to stay in the comfort zone of awareness.

Except that won’t fly. Not in this economy, and really, not ever. We must be accountable for results.

We need to shift our thinking a little bit. Big programs that don’t work can be career, or at least job, ending events.  No one wants to be the guy that put forth a huge social media flop.

Think smaller, think pilot programs. Test, measure, evaluate, and then scale up.

Be more tolerant of failure. Fast, less expensive failure, but don’t dismiss a marketing tactic if a program doesn’t have the initial results you wanted. Figure out why so you don’t repeat the same mistake the next time.

And for goodness sake, ask the right questions so you can know, not guess, that you succeeded.

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Finally,  a quick plug for my contest over at Snapshot Chronicles. Prize is a $100 JCPenney gift card.