Identifying a measurement framework for your marketing activity

Why reporting and analytics is so important?

It is important for a business and marketing department to have a way to measure and help us understand if the decisions we make are having a positive impact. To do so we need a robust and consistent measurement framework and reporting capabilities.

There is a clear advantage for business that take a data driven approach to their marketing and media efforts. This is even more important for the ones that are looking to understand better what are the right ways to measure the ways they can scale.

How do I start developing my reporting and analytics capabilities to drive growth?

First, you need to develop a data driven culture in the organisation where all decisions are taken by looking at data.

Second, you should define clear and measurable objectives. Once you know what you are trying to measure, you can look on ways to measure it.

Third, you have to identify the right measurement framework based on what you are trying to measure.

In the marketing organisation, it is common to use different measurement frameworks according to what you are trying yo measure.

I will do a quick overview of the main measurement frameworks relevant in marketing organisations.

Understand your funnel

Map out the stages that you will be dividing your funnel through, each one of them will take your customer to a different stage and will have specific goals.

The funnel of your customers might vary depending on your business model and the path you are looking your customers to take.

As we build this model (awareness, consideration, conversion, referral, repeat) we have to think customers might not take a linear path and follow each one of these steps. However, having this model will give us a picture of the situation of the customer and where we need to focus our efforts.

Identify the dimensions and metrics

Identify the dimensions and metrics that will measure your success. To do so it is quite common to use 3 main measures:

• Volume
• Quality
• Cost

With this 3 measures you’ll be able to identify the main drivers of growth that you have to focus on with your marketing campaings.

Define your channel activation prioritisation plan, based what side of the funnel you want to develop, improve or influence.

To use an example, let’s say you’re looking to improve the awareness / consideration of your new launched product. You develop a plan to activate high volume channel such as display and paid social.

You should choose metics that will give you a chance to qualify your activity, to put an example:

• Awareness
  • Volume: reach, impressions
  • Quality: viewability / engagement (CTR) / revenue per 1000 impressions / Assisted conversions
  • Cost: CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions).

• Consideration
  • Volume: website visits
  • Quality: registrations
  • Cost: Cost per lead, cost per download, cost per engagement

• Conversion
  • Volume: Sales
  • Quality: Conversion rate / Average order value
  • Cost: Cost per conversion / cost per sale

Allocate this in a table, and keep it for reference:

	Volume	Quality	Cost	Channel
Awareness	Reach / Impressions	Viewability / CTR	Cost per 100 imp	Display / Video & programmatic
Consideration	Website visits	Registrations	Cost per lead	Email / SEM / Affiliate marketing
Conversion	Sales	Conversion rate / Average order value	Cost per conversion /sale	Email / Display retargeting

Now that you’ve identified the metrics you want to use to evaluate the performance of your marketing activity it is time to activate, optimise and test every channel, landing page, promotion, incentive, creative that you can use to drive growth.

To go ahead with this process and start planning the tests you want to run to improve the business performance I would suggest to use a solid methodology. Read how to adopt scientific methodology in your marketing organisation.

If you are interested in finding out about data driven methodologies to develop your strategy I´d suggest to read the following:

• Identify the stages of your funnel. If you haven’t yet check out my post on how to identify your customer journey and funnel.
• Identify what are the channels, products or markets that you have to focus on to grow your business? Check out how to build a prioritisation matrix.
• Using multitouch attribution modelling can also help you answer the question about what is the role of each channel in the customer acquisition journey.

Now it’s your turn, to start mapping out what your funnel looks like. I hope this summary has been helpful.

Are you using a different framework to measure the success of the channels and activity that you are activating? Let me know in the comments below.