Although most companies closely monitor fundamental indicators such as sales and profit, they may be unable to link Marketing investments with these outcomes. As a result, many companies are revisiting their journey to measure the contribution, value, and impact of Marketing initiatives. While everyone is always in a hurry to reach a destination, companies who have had a successful Marketing performance measurement journey experienced several phases along the way:

• Selection
• Planning
• Implementation
• Analysis
• Modification
• Improvement

Move Your Performance Measurement Journey Forward

Where you are at the beginning or somewhere along the way you can give some thought as to the next steps. Incorporate these 6 phases to move your Marketing measurement journey forward.

1. Select your metrics framework and your measurements – Often these will be a result of your company’s objectives and desired business results. Once the selection is made, you can develop a plan for how you will collect the data for the measurements. Make sure your Marketing metrics reflect six attributes.
2. Make a plan – including your metrics definitions, targets, collection, analysis, and reporting processes. It lays the foundation for how you will implement your measurement efforts.
3. Implement! – It is during this phase the first collection of data occurs. The initial data should be used to determine inconsistencies with the aggregated measures. You will want to uncover any glitches in your collection process during this initial step.
   • A key part of this phase should be to determine any problems with data collection to weed out collection problems and bad data. Good analysis of suspect data puts any metrics effort at risk.
4. Analyze the data in new and different ways – see whether you can uncover any relationships between marketing efforts and business outcomes. Your goal during this phase is to determine some of the reasons for how marketing enabled the outcomes to occur.
   • You want to try and determine how changes in marketing efforts and therefore the data affect the outcomes. This is a good time to conduct scenario analysis so you can begin to verify the metrics selection or understand what changes may be required.
5. Determine whether modifications are required – discuss the data, metrics, and outcomes. If so make decisions on what you to change. Once your modifications are required, you will need to repeat the previous phases until you have a set of metrics that show the relationship between marketing investments and business outcomes.
6. Make improvements – As you and your company become more confident and sophisticated you will be able to make improvements to your framework and metrics.

FAQ:

1. Selection: Choose a metrics framework and identify measurements aligned with company objectives and desired business results.
2. Planning: Define metrics, targets, data collection, analysis, and reporting processes.
3. Implementation: Begin data collection, identify and correct inconsistencies or data quality issues.
4. Analysis: Examine data to uncover relationships between Marketing activities and business outcomes, using scenario analysis to validate metrics.
5. Modification: Adjust metrics, processes, or data collection based on analysis; iterate as needed to better reflect Marketing’s impact.
6. Improvement: Refine frameworks and metrics as organizational confidence and sophistication increase.

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