Success Metrics

Marketing needs to extend the notion of value. In the event of adding smaller initiatives to the marketing mix moving customers one step closer to the till, or exploring social media to recruit participants, recognizing that value is much more than the final “sale” is important.

This might seem over evident, but in my experience, it often isn’t
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Patrick reminded me of this in a comment to my last post

. Writing that it needs to be a “win win” situation between the brand and the customer.

Companies tend to view value as monetary, the final “sale”, but money is only the end result after several transactions with the customer, each taking her on step further along the snakes and ladders game board. Moving the customers from start to finish. Each of these transactions require communication, and in the event for them to be measurable and effective we need to define a richer set of success metrics.

The nature of Digital makes this especially important:

– As communication becomes a larger set of smaller ideas spread across a wider range of cooperative platforms, it’s important to recognize that each individual initiative is working on it’s separate goal. It is the totality of these initiatives that is working towards the final “sale”, but to measure for the success of the smaller ideas we need to give them different metrics than the final sale.

– Engaging participants through social media or starting a conversation are all parts of loyalty strategies. Getting people to purchase more than once, but the strategy itself is not focused on sale, it’s all about connecting with participants. There needs to be clearly defined wins along this axis to.

It is important to stay patient, to invest in initiatives that hasn’t got “sale” as its end goal, to be honest and measure correctly for we are building to achieve. If marketers aren’t relying on competitors to drive the category for them, then the marketing strategy is getting people from start to finish. This will mean at least 99 steps to make before customers can reach their final goal.