Measurements

Proper measurement is critical to know if your efforts are on point or need redirected.  But knowing which measurements to use can be a challenge.  Without proper measuring tools, businesses are left aimless, just hoping that what they are doing is working.

Because more businesses are not sure which tools to use, they resort to the only one they know, the bottom line.  They tend to only focus on the financial impact on things.  The problem with using this as the primary measuring tool for marketing, it doesn’t isolate or really tell you what is happening.  The assumption is made that it must be the marketing but there is a myriad of things that could be happening from your sales process to costing.

One tool that is often used, especially with advertising agencies, is the number of people who may see your ad.  While viewership is important, it isn’t the most important thing.  To be effected, your ad first must be shown to the correct audience other wise, you are just throwing money away.  Even if it is shown to the correct audience, engagement is another issue all together.  Just how many of those people are actually taking action on your ad?  After all, this is what you are really looking for, action.

If you understand the 3C areas of Communication Planning, measurement and evaluation becomes much easier.  It allows you to take a much smaller range and look carefully at any engagement.  This allows you to focus in efforts to find what brings you the best results.

• C1 - Community to Contact
  This is where most people think of marketing and communication.  This area is where people happen to come across your brand, however that happens.  The first focus is having your brand stand out so people will come across it.  From there, using the tools to explain how your product or service will transform the customers situation, solve a problem, or provide an new experience becomes important to get people to reach out and contact you.

• C2 - Contact to Customer
  Some companies, this happens at the same time.  However, when we are talking more of the complex sale, often times, there is a gap between these two events.  This gap provides you with the time to really focus in, and show the potential customer how you will help solve a problem or enhance their lives.

• C3 - Customer to Cheerleader
  One of the biggest tragedies is today’s business environment is how often we allow customers to just filter away.  Now there are a lot of reasons that customers drift away and lose contact.  However, this doesn’t take the business off the hook.  What happens after the sale is often more impactful than what happened prior.  This is where you build cheerleaders, those customers who will talk with other people they know and refer them to you.

By dividing your communication strategies into simple components it allows you to really focus in on engagement.  Numbers mean very little of those numbers are not connecting.  For instance, I know of several businesses that are excited because they have thousands of people that have “liked” their Facebook page.  However, no one ever responds to any post that is made.  No one comments.  No one shares.  The companies are spending a lot of time and effort creating and adding content for little or no engagement.  But because they have so many people who have “liked” their page, they think it is successful.

The secret to all marketing and communication is to know what really matters.  Once you focus on engagement, successfully implement new plans, and gain some traction the next step is to add some more energy and expand what you are doing to a wider audience.  Trying to broadcast big without that traction will only get more numbers of people who have seen your ad without ever really engaging with your company.

At Operation Crusader, we know this can be challenging.  That is why we offer both Marketing and Communication Planning to walk you through each step of the way.