Simple Framework for Marketing Campaign ROI Measurement
I speak so often with clients, at conferences, or with colleagues about measuring the success of a campaign that I figured it made sense to share some of the thinking here. I’d love to get your critique, ideas, and input. To me, the basics are simple… people, process, and priorities make it complex.
The way I see it, marketing campaigns need to be evaluated for two reasons: (1) to demonstrate progress (for the CFO), and (2) to inform mid-course corrections to improve results (for the CMO, marketing teams, agency, etc.). And, I guess this won’t surprise anyone who knows my bias, the most effective measurement efforts put people in the middle: what you need me (person) to think, feel, or do to engage in a relationship with you (brand).
Too often, evaluation is relegated to measuring what easily can be, rather than what should be, tracked. To avoid this pitfall, campaign measurement should be built around concrete business goals and the efficiency of specific tactics to deliver on the expected outcomes (thoughts, feelings, and actions among our target audiences) that will make those goals a reality.
Using this approach, the basic framework for the campaign evaluation should be tracking (A) Business Goals, (B) Consumer Journey Outcomes, and (C) Channel / Tactic Efficiency.
Progress toward Business Goals are tracked within client data systems (hopefully). They need to be timely, specific, and accessible.
Consumer Journey Outcomes simply means how you believe your marketing efforts are going to influence people. At the basic level, marketing is about creating a demand for a relationship, activating that relationship, and maximizing the (mutually beneficial, we hope) relationship over time. So this is what we should track in this area. And the metrics showed in the middle column above give you some ideas of how/what to track.
Consumer Journey Outcomes must either be observed or measured through some type of survey research. In every case, metrics within this area require you to ask a random sampling of your target audiences a series of questions.
Channel / Tactic Efficiency is all about how much we spend on specific campaign elements, how many people they reach, and how long / how often our target audience is engaged with, or by, these tactics. Of course, there are interesting things you can do today in this area, too, that get at engagement with the tactic/channel/content that is more than just reach. But, in the end, these metrics are all channel-centric. And, I believe this still is what most people are referring to when they talk about ROI measurement. But, hopefully I’ve made a case why they are meaningless without the context of the Consumer Journey Outcomes.
At the very least, huge value can be realized if we simply report progress against Business Goals, Journey Outcomes, and Tactic Efficiency. Combining all three over time, there are really cool things you can do as you track in these areas to map the relationship between specific tactics to journey outcomes to business goals. Those tactics (messages or channels or a combination) most effective can be increased, those not working can be modified or eliminated.
So, there it is. Hope this helps someone thinking through what to measure rather than measuring what you can!
During an otherwise informative and interesting panel discussion at the opening session at yesterday’s Audience Measurement 4.0 conference (put on by the ARF), such a question was asked that resulted in dead silence.