5 Step Guide to Successful Marketing Measurement

5 Steps to Successful Marketing Measurement

Step 1: Identify Core Business Outcomes

Clearly established OKRs are the basis for a strong marketing plan. Without clear objectives, you run the risk of prioritizing metrics, tactics, and strategies that don’t translate to meaningful growth – wasting valuable time and dollars. So understand the core business goals at the company level, as defined by key stakeholders. This will be the centerpiece of your marketing decisions.

From there, your team has a roadmap to clearly understand the organizational expectations of marketing. You can then build a strategic marketing plan to fulfill your role in meeting those bottom line goals.

Make your marketing goals universally known – within your team and with key stakeholders across the organization – to ensure everyone is enthusiastically rowing in the same direction.

Elise Stieferman – Director of Marketing, Coegi

Step 2: Determine the KPIs to Signal Success

Next, determine which metrics are indicators of making progress toward your core business objectives. These will be your key performance indicators or KPIs.

Be cautious of using media efficiency metrics like CPMs and CPCs as your primary KPIs. They can be effective for evaluating campaign performance on an operational level. But, they often do not ladder up to business objectives. Incorporate metrics such as engagement, brand lift, transactional data, and ROAS analysis to gain better understanding. It can also be beneficial to explore more statistical forms of analysis, such as media mix modeling and matched market tests to get to the heart of success.

Step 3: Evaluate Incrementality

Determining which tactics are helping reach your KPIs isn’t always easy. Just because Facebook’s last click attribution reports show better metrics than other channels does not mean it is the leading driver of results. A purchase today could have been impacted by a connected TV ad served last week that was reinforced by an influencer on TikTok yesterday.

With decreasing data availability with iOS 14 and impending cookie deprecation, attribution modeling is becoming increasingly difficult and problematic. Marketers should get back to the basics of marketing measurement, such as evaluating incrementality.

Incrementality shows the influence your collective marketing channels had on the final conversion, no matter where it took place.

Step 4: Create a Test and Learn Cycle

The goal is to create a cycle of continuous improvement for your marketing. You can do this by using a learning agenda that informs variable testing and optimization points.

A learning agenda helps identify the key questions you can answer to determine which marketing components are driving the best outcomes. This could mean a better understanding of your target consumer or determining which tactics are most effective. So what could these questions look like?

• • Millennial Moms is an audience with untapped potential for our brand.

• • Our target consumer is more likely to convert on Facebook than Instagram.

• • Lead generation will be more cost efficient on TikTok than Snapchat. 

• • Running CTV and linear TV together will drive an increase in sales versus running only linear.

Whether or not your hypotheses turn out to be true, you will be more informed and your campaigns will become more data-driven and effective.

Now you have meaningful measurement data – it’s time to connect the dots.

Step 5: Use Data Storytelling for Better Insights

• • How did various channels work together? 

• • Which areas were most and least successful? 

• • What story is the data telling about your audiences, your creatives, and your selected channels?

Use these types of questions to identify the underlying narrative running through your data. To aid this process, visualize the data so you can easily pinpoint trends and understand performance relative to goals. This intel can guide new creative or adjustment of certain tactics and spend allocation to make your future campaigns even stronger. It should also highlight any gaps between customer touch points and eventual conversion or retention.

Looking from a macro lens helps weave the micro data points into a cohesive story that makes sense to marketers as well as external teams. From there, you can lay out clear, actionable steps based on analytic insights to transform your digital marketing strategy.

Bonus Marketing Measurement Steps

#1 Tailor Reporting to Individual Stakeholders

Create a reporting system so each decision-maker clearly understands the impact of marketing. Show ROI to your CFO. Show trends in marketing qualified leads and sales to your COO. Show percent change in new customers to your CEO. Knowing the audience and tailoring your story to their unique point of view will ensure the information resonates and your efforts are valued.

#2 Move from Campaigns to Long-Term Transformation

This process fuels a data feedback loop, creating an infinite cycle of improvement. Over time, you’ll minimize media waste and make more intentional decisions. It’s never perfect, but by using meaningful data to tell your brand story, you can ensure it is always evolving.

Contact Coegi for additional information on how to accurately measure your business objectives and see clear marketing results.