“What is the best way to measure the impact of my marketing spending?” is the #1 question I hear from my clients, and it’s no wonder–with increasing emphasis on efficiency and an inability to tie many tactics directly to revenue, marketing spending gets harder and harder to justify.

But rigorous, common-sense marketing measurement provides so many benefits.

• It allows you to increase the impact of every dollar you spend over time. If you know how your tactics are performing today and measure them consistently over time, you can adjust your mix of tactics to provide the greatest combined impact.
• It allows you to understand which marketing tactics to compare to each other and which can serve as acceptable substitutes to one another.
• It allows you to have more constructive conversations with marketing and non-marketing counterparts about the quality of your marketing execution.  “Oh, your college-aged nephew didn’t like our recent instagram post about aging skin? Good to know.  It happened to be our top performing post of the past month, gaining us almost 100 new followers.”
• It allows optimization of creative, targeting, and messaging because it’s easy to see their impact on a given tactic’s effectiveness.

 The great news is that there are only 2 simple questions you need to ask to develop a terrific marketing measurement plan: ‘What am I trying to do here?’ and ‘How will I know if it’s working?’

1. What am I trying to do here?

Many popular marketing tactics (organic social media, influencer marketing, etc) have a veritable hydra of success metrics attached to them–reach, engagement, clicks, follows–and it can be difficult to understand whether you’ve been successful when clicks are low but engagement is high (or vice versa).

I find it very helpful to ensure an individual marketing execution (not channel or tactic, but an individual creative + tactic)  is focused on one part of your customer’s journey. With this specific tactic, am I trying to get my customer to be aware of your product?  Am I trying to get someone who is already aware to add my product to their consideration set? Am I trying to get someone who has been considering my product to actually purchase it?  Or am I trying to get someone who has already purchased to repurchase or to become an advocate for my product?  Deciding the primary function of each tactic before you execute is your single most important tool for marketing effectiveness. In addition to allowing you to tailor your messaging exactly to its desired function, you will also be able to understand how to measure whether your tactic is having the desired effect.

2. How will I know if it’s working?

Again, we’re back to this conundrum of multiple success metrics for a given tactic.  But once you know WHAT you’re trying to do, you can craft your messaging and creative to drive an outcome that you feel best represents the impact you’re trying to achieve.

Let’s look at this in action with a simple example from organic social media: 

• If I want to increase consideration, I might post a video explaining my product’s benefits (or even just displaying expertise in my subject area) and measure video completions.  Or, I could post a sample or information giveaway and measure subsequent sign-ups for my email list. King Arthur Baking uses this video to reinforce their expertise and create inspiration–I might count likes or shares to assess this post’s effectiveness.
• But if I wanted to drive conversion, I might post a promotional announcement highlighting a flash sale, free shipping, or gift with purchase, and I would measure clicks through to the product page. (Worth noting: I don’t love organic social for conversion–why are you going to discount to the people who already love you?--but you could choose to pursue this if your brand’s target consumer is one who loooves a good deal.) Here’s an example from Target where they are clearly driving people into the store (and to their link in bio to order from target.com!).
• This example from Glossier is a great example of using an organic social post to drive advocacy by encouraging sign-ups to their ‘G Collective’ loyalty program.
• If I wanted to drive awareness…I might consider a different tactic.  Because much organic social media (I’m excluding TikTok for simplicity) is served primarily to people who already follow the brand, it tends not to be the most efficient tactic for awareness.  That said, if you have an organic post that goes viral, congratulations!  But if you measure each post on its ability to drive awareness of you and your product(s) at scale, you may be disappointed.

**Note: I don’t love organic social media as a priority tactic for most big brands, as many consumers will not follow these brands because they don’t want to be overtly ‘marketed to’ during their social media ‘me time’.  Which seems fair.  I used organic social media as an example only because it’s a tactic familiar to most that perfectly illustrates this concept.

So, that’s it.  Two simple questions between you and effective marketing tactic measurement.  And effective marketing tactic measurement is our first step toward estimating our overall marketing ROI ($ return on investment).  Stay tuned for more on that next! 

Want more specific information (by tactic) for measuring marketing tactics?  Click here to sign up for a free marketing measurement cheat sheet!