The Future of Marketing Measurement – Spend Less Get Better Results / Part 2

Marketing is changing and it is changing at a rapid pace.

The days of “touchy feely” and failing to accurately measure the ROI on all aspects of your marketing investment are fast coming to an end.

Simply thinking of an expensive marketing activity as “brand building” is no longer sufficient.

In the last article we discussed the measurement of the ROI for online marketing.

This is the simplest thing to measure as measurement of results is inherent in digital marketing.

In this article we will talk a little bit about methodologies to measure offline marketing.

First, lets revisit the specific details of our test case….

Test Case: The Bathroom Renovation Co

The Bathroom Renovation Co is a business turning over $3 million per annum and employing 15 staff which includes full time management / sales, office staff and tradies.

They have a showroom / office located in an industrial estate which predominantly gets visitors from referrals or their advertising rather than passing trade.

Their marketing activities generate approximately 80 percent of their new sales with 20 percent from referrals and return customers.

They invest $169,000 per annum in marketing as follows;-

Web Marketing Paid – $48,000
Web Marketing Organic – $36,000
Radio – $25,000
TV – $30,000
Print – $20,000
Direct – $10,000

Radio Advertising

Radio Advertising can be a great place to generate quality leads and to build you brand whilst you are doing it.

Prior to embarking on a radio advertising campaign you need (as a minimum) to know the following;-

1. Who is my market (geographic, demographic, psychographic etc etc)
2. What radio station(s) are they listening to
3. When are they listening to those radio stations (morning drive time, during the day at work, evening drive time, evenings, weekends etc)
4. What is the main problem that they have that my product / service solves
5. How can I communicate to them effectively such that they will take the action I want them to

The great thing is that you should already know items 1, 3 and 4 because, if you do not, then none of your marketing will likely be very effective.

Measuring The ROI From Your Radio Advertising Campaign

There are a number of ways to measure your radio advertising campaign.

You can use a unique phone number during the campaign and measure the number of calls to that number.

You can use a unique web page to drive radio traffic to and measure the visits, unique visits and conversion rate of that page.

You can use your CRM system to identify which of the leads from the above turned into sales and therefore calculate the ROI on that particular advertising campaign.

The Issue Of Final Click Attribution In Accurate Measurement

The above is fine for final click attribution.

NOTE: Final click attribution measures and attributes a lead to the final place from where it was generated. This is far better than no measurement, however, it does have limitations.

What about a situation where a potential client has heard your ad on the radio a few times and then has visited the homepage of your website (and internal pages), checked you out on social media etc etc ?

Two months later they look at the website to get your phone number and give you a call.

In terms of measurement that last phone number will get credited with the lead.

The issue is that your other marketing initiatives that contributed along the way (most notably radio as it was the point of first contact) do not receive the recognition they deserve.

Based upon no data measurement on the first time the lead heard about your business (in this case on the radio) you may make a decision to discontinue radio advertising.

The simplest way to get around this may be to ask the client how they first heard about your business when they call or complete a web form.

Then make sure you add this information to your CRM and use it to calculate the ROI on your radio marketing.

Good decisions are made from experience, knowledge and good data.

TV and Print Advertising

The issues and solutions with TV and print advertising are similar to those for radio advertising.

You can measure both tv and print advertising by using a unique phone number and / or by sending the traffic to a unique web page e.g. http://mywebsite.com.au/tv

Once again, final click attribution is an item that requires some thought in order to really understand the value you are gaining in return for your ad spend.

Direct Advertising

Direct Advertising comes in various forms and varies widely in terms of the response you may receive.

Some forms of direct marketing include;-

• Email Marketing
• Direct Mail
• Leaflet Drops

As with all advertising the response you gain from any given advertising medium reflects the type of product or service you are promoting.

A pizza deal promoted via a leaflet drop would likely have a better response than a drive for new gym memberships.

Alternatively, an email campaign that targets ex customers from a gym in the period after new year may reap higher rewards.

Generally, email marketing delivering targeted offers to a targeted database of potential or existing clients can deliver good results for a business.

Once again, measurement of the success of a direct marketing campaign is not difficult using unique web pages, unique phone numbers or UTM codes.

NOTE: A UTM code is a simple code that can be used to track a traffic source or campaign. The UTM code allows your Analytic software to identify where site visitors came from in addition to which campaign they responded to. 

You Must Measure Everything

Pretty much everything is measurable and to improve you must measure everything.

Measuring form submissions from your website and not phonecalls is giving you data that is insufficient to make sound investment decisions.

Measuring everything from your website and nothing from your direct marketing is giving you data that is insufficient to make sound investment decisions.

Easy for you to say I hear the groans…… I already work ridiculous hours making the wheels turn within the business, managing the staff and working on the accounts and growth strategies after hours.

And this is a very fair assessment of the challenges facing the small to medium business owner.

Our Challenge At Oracle Digital

Our challenge is to solve this challenge for your business.

To provide the tools and the intelligence to allow you to have the information at your fingertips to make informed decisions about your marketing spend.

We are 100% committed to total marketing measurement and will progressively be delivering the tools required to achieve this on an ongoing basis.

We have already made significant progress in this area and plan to release stage 1 of our measurement product during the first quarter of 2015.

Please feel free to call or message OD for more information about our initiatives in this area.