The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business

MARKETING MEASUREMENT

Application: Control, Tracking, Planning

The Concept

This is another controversial, extensive, and important field that it is difficult to do justice to in this format. Marketers undoubtedly need to set up mechanisms whereby they can gain an indication of the effectiveness of their work. There have, though, been some idiotic concepts promulgated as to how they should do that and there remains extensive confusion. The balance of judgement about the most simple of measures, revenue generated, shows how difficult it is to reach a sensible, professional perspective of marketing measurement.

When a new campaign is launched it is, in many environments, relatively easy to track the leads passed to the sales force. So, it should at least be possible to set up a measure of “leads generated” and then to analyse how many turn into sales. There are though a number of considerations which make this crude measure only an indication of success. For instance, the campaign may follow a number of other campaigns and be reaping the momentum of that former investment. Or it may be part of a powerful brand franchise, building its worth on the heritage of brand equity. And what about those sales that the sales force closed? How many were stimulated by this campaign and not by the sales person themselves? How many opportunities were lost because warm leads were passed to hopelessly ...