There was considerable interest in marketing metrics and ROI at our two-day "Doing New with Less" marketing workshop for the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association.
One question we addressed was, "When do you develop marketing metrics during strategic planning for new initiatives?"
Should you develop metrics as you start developing your strategy? Or should you develop metrics after the strategy is developed as a final (or near-final) step in strategic planning?
Our recommendation is to address marketing metrics as you start developing your strategy.
Why?
Addressing metrics as you first work on strategic planning pays multiple dividends. Doing so can:
- Identify gaps in the systems and processes to track the metrics you need.
- Suggest new strategies designed to create needed metrics.
- Reveal that you are not aggressive enough in your strategy to fully exploit all the opportunities to generate needed returns.
- Show that there is a mismatch between management expectations on the timing of business returns and when you will realize them.
- Uncover disconnects between your strategic direction and the metrics you currently have to track progress and success.
- Help you sequence developing marketing metrics to match up with the timing for implementing other marketing efforts.
If you're in the midst of strategic planning currently, make sure marketing metrics are getting due attention early in the process before you're plan is figured out. If not, you may miss that you are missing the marketing metrics you need while you can still do enough about it! – Mike Brown
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