A measurement plan allows you to outline your marketing objectives and track the metrics to measure its success. When it comes to planning out a marketing strategy, marketers have to make important decisions. In order to make these decisions they need data to help them. Data can help them see which marketing efforts have brought in more revenue or how much investment they can expect to make.
Measurement plan forms a foundation for your overall marketing strategy. With a measurement plan you can align processes and determine which areas need focus. It provides a structure that will help you implement strategies and measure results. Measurement plan is a good way to report all the information related to your marketing efforts and to see whether the objectives are being met.
Here are the reasons why marketing activities need a measurement plan.
Set Clear Goals and objectives
Before planning any marketing strategies, you need to have your goals in place. Goal is the final outcome that you want to achieve, while objective is the action that helps you achieve a goal. Sometimes businesses can make mistakes while setting goals. The goals could be too vague, or they might be difficult to measure. With a measurement plan you can write down your goals and objectives that will help you achieve them.
For example, your goal could be to create awareness about your business and your objective will be to increase more website traffic. Objectives can help you make your goals more achievable. Measurement plans will also help you assess the strategies and measure KPIs that support your goals. This entire planning process will help you set accurate, achievable and measurable goals.
Implementation Plan
After setting your goals, you can organize all the strategies and tactics you are planning to implement. Strategy is the overall plan on how you want to complete your objective. Tactics are certain actions you will take to implement that strategy. For example, if your objective is to increase your website traffic then your strategy could be to put out some educational content. In order to implement this strategy, you can use tactics like writing blogs, posting on social media, guest blogging, link building etc.
Having your goals and implementation plan side-by-side in a measurement plan will provide a clear view of your marketing campaign. The strategy and tactics broken down would make it easier for you to manage your projects. It can be easy to coordinate within the team and assign these tasks individually. It can work as a checklist to keep a track of which task is completed and which is not.
Measuring KPIs
Measurement enables you to map out your goals, objectives and strategies. After organizing all your objectives and implementation plan the next step would be to measure the supporting KPIs. With a measurement plan you can list down all the KPIs and targets that you want to track in order to see how your marketing campaign is performing. KPI is the measure that helps you understand if you are achieving your desired results. Target is the benchmark you are aiming for your KPIs.
In this phase of the measurement plan you can set your KPIs and track them on a monthly basis. For example, in order to track your objective to increase website traffic you will measure KPIs like number of new visitors, blog traffic, page views per session etc. The KPI section in your measurement plan will help you see the gradual progress of your marketing campaign. If some areas are not performing as expected, you can optimize your campaigns. It will give you room for improvement as well as encourage you to experiment with different techniques to reach your overall goal.
Audience Segmentation
Every customer will go through a buyer’s journey. A buyer’s journey consists of four stages which are awareness, consideration, evaluation and decision. This gives you an understanding of how your customers reach a purchase decision and what is the driving factor behind it. Measurement plans can give you the flexibility to create a marketing campaign according to different stages in a buyer’s journey.
Different stages required different marketing tactics. If some of your marketing activities brought a potential lead to your website, then you will nurture that lead and help them convert. The entire process from awareness to decision making needs a marketing plan that helps the target audience to convert and become customers. With a measurement plan you can segment your marketing activities into the different stages of the journey. For example, in the awareness stage your objectives might be to get more website traffic and in the consideration stage it might be to engage that traffic. It allows you to define and organize all your plans with respect to your target audience. Measurement plan gives you a bird’s eye view of how your audience is interacting with your brand and converting.
Team Coordination
Having a measurement plan can get your entire team on board keeping everyone in sync. Creating a measurement plan can encourage brainstorming and coming with ideas that can help you get a different perspective in your marketing strategy. The tasks can be divided among different team members. It can improve team coordination and communication. As your marketing campaign progresses, everyone on the team will be updated and informed. The team members can also make any changes required to keep the data accurate and relevant.
Making Improvements
Once you launch your campaign and start measuring results you will become more accustomed to using this plan. Measurement plans will require maintenance. You need to keep a check on the data you are collecting and make sure that it is relevant. Any changes you make to the campaign or your business should reflect in your measurement plan. As you start using your measurement plan you will want to make changes to the format or add new sections etc. You can easily make those changes to help you track your progress easily.
Since the measurement plan gives you an overall view on how your campaigns are performing, it shows you the areas of improvement. You can take into account those aspects that are not contributing to your goals and make changes or optimize them. Making these changes in time can help you save a lot of money and time.
Making marketing decisions can sometimes become a tough task. Sometimes tracking all the marketing campaigns can become complicated. A measurement plan can give your marketing efforts a structure by helping you organize all your activities. Regular maintenance of your measurement plan will keep your data clean, fresh and relevant. Every business, whether big or small, needs a measurement plan to get the best results out of their marketing endeavors.
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