If you can’t measure it then don’t do it
Online / digital marketing is very different than old school marketing. Traditional marketeers would run campaign after campaign with no true measure of how well it really performed. I gave away 1000 t-shirts! woohoo, OK that’s great, so how did that contribute to the bottom line? It’s building awareness stupid! ok so how much awareness? well uumm….
In today’s difficult economic climate we need to prioritise everything, that means setting targets and measuring against them. In my view, if I can’t measure the performance, then I shouldn’t do it or really question whether it’s worth while. EVERYTHING can be measured, let me say again, EVERYTHING can be measured. If I’m on a radio show I want to know how many listeners I was reaching and if I experienced a lift in my web traffic. There’s a pleathra of tools available today to measure the impact your marketing, PR and sales team have on your business. Here are just some.
- Web Analytics
- Google Analytics
- Yahoo! Web Analytics
- Omniture
- Maxymiser
- Feedburner
- Social Media Analytics
- Inhouse reports
Before you start a campaign it’s important that you outline what the objectives are and define the success metrics. You can then calcuate the ROI by reporting on the following.
- Run Rate
- Return
- Incremental
- Funding / Cost
- ROI
Remember you don’t have to close a sale to have an ROI, it simply depends on what your objective and unit of success is.
I'm James O’Sullivan 
