Developing meaningful business performance indicators
There have never been as many ways to measure how well a marketing campaign performs but, in this day and age, there are equal chances to get these measurements wrong.
When we talk about how we measure a digital marketing campaign, people usually think about the performance indicators, and usually at the end-point. For example, revenue generation always comes up as the first indicator that people would think of to measure the marketing performance when it comes to E-commerce. The burning question is: Is that really all there is? Are there in fact other performance indicators that we can use to measure the success of a marketing campaign?
Think about when you go shopping online, or better yet, at a physical store. Window shopping or browsing a product you might be interested in is the very first step of the shopping experience. People will look around as much as they can until they decide to finally move a product to their shopping cart. Once they are happy with everything in the cart, they go to check out. Here, a question might come up such as “Are you already a member?”.
If they are, they will have to provide an identifier.
If they’re not, a sign-up option will pop up.
At this point, some may sign up for membership, and some will not.
All in all, the most interesting part is in fact after the customers have completed their payment.
If you have read this far, you’ll realize it’s naïve to think the only valuable performance indicator of the campaign is just the revenue. It’s obvious there are several actions the customers are required to perform from beginning to end, and these really matter in terms of performance analysis, in order to initiate a strategy to achieve a higher conversion rate.
Even though these actions do matter, when it comes to returning on investment, what is used to measure is the revenue. Revenue trumps all. As with everything, the closer the action is to the revenue, the better conversion rate it should have.
Having made these points, we believe there is flexibility in how a company can measure its business, and how a company does this should not be restricted by limitations placed on technology and designs created during the design processes. Shouldn’t business users talk to the design team when they are creating the workflow? When they do this, of course, there will be arguments between the teams, but that is acceptable and even welcome, provided in the end, both teams find the compromise where business users are allowed access to enough data for analysis, while the design remains attractive.
If you believe that the paragraphs above make perfect sense, but you are a bit lost as to where you can begin in order to apply this idea to action, here are steps to consider.
- Before you go ahead and implement the analytics tool, have the business users and/or consultants do a workshop together with the other teams who may be involved (e.g. creative teams, marketers, etc.) to identify the goals, objectives, and requirements. This gives a clear organization and direction. Everyone will be on the same page.
- List and categorize all the requirements in a single document for review.
- Upon approvals of all involved units, the requirements will be translated into a solution design and sent to users for reference. This will be sent to the technical consulting side as well, to issue a technical specification.
- The technical specification will be the “holy grail” for all the developer teams to follow religiously so that the implementation is applied in the same methodology.
Digital channels have led to an explosion in available data, offering the chance for marketers to engage, personalize and attribute the success of campaigns. It is ideal to have business users involved in the process from the beginning so that everything will move in the same direction, as well as meet the company goals.
Papon Sukanthasaevee
Head of Business Consulting
#TeamMontivory
