Lower Your Bounce Rates with SMstudy

The bounce rate (BR) or the percentage of people who entered a website and immediately left, is a popular metric companies use to determine the quality of a webpage.

According to Digital Marketing, Book 2 in the SMstudy Guide®, bounce rate is defined as “the percentage of visitors who leave the first page of a website they encounter without clicking to other pages on the website. A lower bounce rate from a modified advertisement would indicate that customers were leaving the page less often, possibly because they were finding the page relevant to the advertisement. The target bounce rate should be the bounce rate of pages linked to similar advertisements that the company has used successfully.”

So, a BR is not exactly a percentage of people who visited a website and immediately left, but actually a percentage of people who visited a website but then performed no other trackable actions. Technically, according to these guidelines, a person could read a 10-thousand-word article on a company’s website and share it with five hundred of their closest friends without actually performing a trackable action. A common misconception in regards to BR is often the way it is calculated. If a company does not take into consideration the example above, then the bounce rate will appear to be too high.

Once a bounce rate is properly calculated, it’s time to get down to business. User experience should be the first factor a company looks at in the hopes of reducing their BR. People that browse websites are looking for a seamless passage through the site. If a company’s website is confusing, difficult to navigate or causes confusion, people will tend to look for another site they can get around more easily. As the old saying goes, “keep it simple, stupid.” Another easy way to enhance user experience is to ensure the content is relevant and engaging. This can be done by creating videos, images, blog articles, and more.

One additional action that can easily improve a person’s user experience is customizing language to region. As stated in Digital Marketing, “In order to ensure that the marketing message is relevant and reaches audiences around the world, businesses can also customize their ads based on the language preference for their audience. For example, a company providing services in Canada may wish to develop both French and English versions of their ads to target search queries in either official language.”

For more information about bounce rate and how to lower your company’s percentage visit www. SMstudy.com where you can be sure you will be able to take a seamless journey through our website. 

Social Insights on Video Marketing in the Age of YouTube

Down ‘n’ dirty or überposh, there’s a place for all quality of video marketing in the world today.

Recently we noted marketers’ growing acumen at not only parsing available social data, but also using the social media environment to probe the social community and glean consumer preferences and other social insights.  

We said, “Filling the role of the modern-day focus group, social media insights are also valuable for taking the temperature of the public on an idea such as a logo or slogan, a product or service. Testing the social media world’s tastes and perceptions allows for adjustment before launching, saving money and perhaps even preventing a catastrophic mistake.”

A recent experiment co-sponsored by Google and L’Oreal was one such probe that asked “whether storytelling changes for different age groups?” Results provided interesting insights into the minds of the under-45 crowd and how they respond to various styles of video marketing.

The study presented three L’Oreal ad spots (via YouTube) promoting a new eyeshadow. Researchers then documented which of the three had the greatest impact across three age groups: 18 to 24, 25 to 34 and 35 to 44.

The first ad is a traditional cosmetics commercial- gorgeous photography, high glamour. The kind of ad we’d expect to see on television. This one was named “The Glam.”

The second was more of a how-to video but still retained some glamorous elements. This one was called, “The Show.”

The third, named “The Tell,” was a user-generated DIY video. A regular “girl next door” talking about the makeup and how to apply it. Straight forward and practical.  

The results were both expected and surprising. Let’s explain…

“The Glam” scored very well, indeed. Topping the charts for both the 18-24 and 35-44 age groups, with no major difference in their rate of viewing.

The report states that “Regardless of age, "The Glam," the most traditionally structured and produced video, was the most "unskippable" ad with the strongest view-through rate (VTR).”

No real surprise here, right? We all love gorgeous images, compelling copy and a little eye candy never hurts. 

But here is where the experiment gets interesting.

Although “The Glam” view rates were 82% higher, it was “The Tell,” the DIY, user-generated styled video that did exceedingly well with the 18-24 age group (aka millennials) in the category of Ad Recall, coming in 100% higher than “The Glam.”

What the marketing study showed clearly was the changing generational tastes in regards to how marketed products are received. “The Glam” was accepted by all age groups as the highest visual quality with superior storytelling, but failed to provide the same viewer retention as “The Tell.” “The Tell” provided obvious how-to value and millennials had no problem accepting the unpolished amateur style of video. In addition, because “The Tell” felt more like “taking advice from a friend” it produced a click-through rate two times higher than the “The Glam” and “The Show,” meaning even in its bling-less status, the how-to video created a stronger call to action.

The report suggests millennials are miles more accepting of low-fi video production than the Gen Xer's… even when they know it’s an ad. For marketers that’s a pretty big deal. If the study proves accurate upon additional testing, anyone with a smartphone and some chutzpah can shoot marketing videos (bringing the cost to nearly zero) and still have the same chance at online virility, the holy grail of digital marketing.

All this to say, there appears to be a place for both “The Glam” and “The Tell” in today’s online marketplace, given the tastes of millennials to accept less traditional, high-gloss marketing as long as it offers legitimate value. This opens the door for greater marketing opportunities no matter what the budget.

For more articles on Sales and Marketing, visit smstudy.com.

Sources:

“2015 Will Be the Year of Video Marketing,” Tyler Lessard, Dec. 17, 2014 http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/26719/2015-will-be-the-year-of-video-marketing

“How Demographics and Storytelling Style Affect Video Ad Effectiveness,” Ben Jones, January 6. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/how-demographics-storytelling-style-affect-video-ad-effectiveness.html?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Think

“In Search of Social Media Insights,” SMstudy.com. http://smstudy.com/Article/the-search-for-social-media-insights

Photo credit: Laura Lee Moreau

What Did You Do When You Were Supposed to be Sleeping?

Sleep Cycle is an app that tracks your sleep cycle. Seems pretty simple, but looks can be deceiving. In November of 2015, just a few short months ago, the app was released to the public and the vote is in. Everyone loves it.

So, here’s what you do. First, download the app. Before you go to sleep set the alarm programmed in the app and the sleep cycle device will activate. Place your phone screen side down on your nightstand, plug in your charger, and, hopefully, have a great night of sleep.

When you wake up in the morning, the app provides you with a line graph that depicts how many hours you were in bed and how your sleep varied throughout the night from awake, sleep, and deep sleep.

I tried out the app for the first time last night and it appears as if I am a champion sleeper, but I moved 1,267 times. I am a champion sleeper that thrashes.

But that’s not all! The trends tab on the app is available to premium members, and it provides you with several different charts that display sleep quality, what time you went to bed, the amount of time in bed, and what time you woke up at for the week. It also gives you a percentage in regards to sleep quality. Did you sleep poorly because you ate dinner too late? Or did you wake up refreshed because you hit the gym the day before? The app will tell you. It also lets you know if your sleep quality was affected by air pressure, weather, or if you are a thrasher like me.

You get all of this information for a large fee of 83 cents a month (This is not a typo).

Sales and marketing professionals can learn a thing or two from Sleep Cycle. We, as people, are fascinated about sleep. We can’t study our own sleep patterns, considering we are sleeping, so it was all too fascinating to find out that I sleep the majority of my night in a deep sleep. I would have never known that. That’s how they get us in. It’s all a marketing ploy. And then for just 83 cents a month I can not only learn how I sleep, but I will learn how I can sleep better. Who doesn’t want to know that?

83 cents a month is nothing for us fortunate enough to be living in a first world country. We see the advantages for the app, sign up, and never unsubscribe because it is only 83 cents, even though we never use the app anymore and it has been long forgotten. And the money is just rolling in for Sleep Cycle.

(Applause for Sleep Cycle)

So what did they do right? First of all, it is a very big gamble to charge such a low monthly fee. But according to Marketing Strategy, book one in the SMstudy® Guide, it was a very calculated move with the help of secondary marketing research. “Secondary marketing research involves the use of content and information that is currently available within the company or in the market through primary research that has already been conducted and is readily obtainable through company reports, trade journals, industry publications, and/or the Internet.”

The very popular Fitbit will track your sleep, but it can cost upwards of 200 dollars. Fitbit sold nearly 11 million devices last year, so the market was there. From looking at information that was right at their fingertips, Sleep Cycle was able to build a sales and marketing plan that was destined to succeed.

I was pulled in by a marketing ploy and I didn’t even see it. That’s how you know a company is doing its job well. I look forward to going to sleep tonight, I have a competitive streak, so I want to beat last night’s amazing performance.

Give it a try, you know you want to.

For more information and resources about sales and marketing visit SMstudy.com.

Back Talk Can Be Good for You; Customer-Centric Differentiation and SMstudy

“I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you…”

– Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California”

When potential customers “wander in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans,” what sets your product apart from all of the others on the shelf? What makes buyers begin following you?

Is it the need that you meet? Or the value proposition you offer? Is it your product’s packaging? Or placement on the shelf? Is it the reputation of your company that shines a special spotlight on your offering?  If your answer is, “Yes,” then you’re ready for a trip into the sometimes puzzling world of creating a product’s differentiated positioning. Grab your cape, Alice; you never know what you’ll run into down the rabbit hole.

A well-planned and executed differentiated positioning of a product sets it apart and attracts buyers. The process of creating a differentiated positioning “involves creating a positioning statement that clearly articulates, in a succinct sentence, how the company wants the customers in its selected target markets to perceive its products,” says Marketing Strategy, book one in theSMstudy™ Guide series.[1]

In our previous article, “What Turns a Ford into a Lincoln,” we looked at the use of features to set one product apart from another, to make it attractive to targeted market segments. This same list of features is used when writing the positioning statement. In this blog we consider the influence of the target segment itself and customer feedback on preparing that “succinct sentence.”   

Once your company has completed the process of selecting a target segment, it will have “detailed information…, such as specific wants and needs, customer personas, segment size, and so forth,” according to Marketing Strategy. The company then can “analyze the target segment information to determine areas where it has, or can, create a competitive advantage when positioning its products.” 

Where does a company get a clear statement of the “specific wants and needs” of their potential customers? From customer feedback, of course. “But, they’re potential customers!” someone is saying, “How can we get feedback from customers that aren’t customers, yet?” There are ways down this rabbit hole.

One way is to use industry benchmarks and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). “Comparing the company’s performance against industry benchmarks and KPIs helps prevent a company from focusing its positioning efforts on creating differentiators that are of little importance to customers in the industry,” the SMstudy™ Guide says. Your potential customers will have significant similarities with others in the targeted segment for similar products.

Closely related to benchmarks and KPIs, are existing marketing research reports. Your company or an industry group may have already conducted research that is relevant. “This research can help identify the best possible product features and associated product positioning based on how purchase intentions vary with changes to particular product characteristics. Furthermore, analyzing customers’ attitudes toward competitors’ products provides additional insights into how well the positioning strategies of competitors are working, and whether there are some gaps in their positioning that the company can exploit,” says the SMstudy™ Guide.

Another way is to talk to your company’s present customers. “No one can articulate your strengths better than your clients,” writes Cidnee Stephen in her article “How to Differentiate Your Business from the Competition.”[2]

As the SMstudy™ Guide puts it, “Understanding the customer experience and obtaining customer feedback about a company’s existing products (a concept referred to as the “Voice of the Customer”) helps a company to determine the positioning of its products. Such customer feedback includes improvement suggestions, compliments, and complaints.” Your company has probably been collecting feedback of this nature through post-purchase surveys, product registration processes, and the “Contact Us” tab on its website. This data is usually reviewed through a product or service improvement filter. Now is the time to look at that data with a filter emphasizing positioning.

Product piloting and conducting focus groups are two additional ways to collect feedback on a product or service that is not yet in wide distribution.

Our trip seems to use product and company differentiation interchangeably. Does that make sense? Down this rabbit hole, it does. The two are membrane on membrane close. The differentiated positioning of the company as a whole should guide all positioning of the company’s products and services. 

Does this article say it all about creating differentiated positioning? Absolutely not! In fact, the part of our treatment of this topic will discuss using SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats).

As good as back talk can be, so can a good SWOT across the backside … or at least, across the corporate office!

For more interesting and informative articles on sales and marketing, visit SMstudy.

[1] The SMstudy™ Guide is available at http://www.smstudy.com/SMBOKGuide. 

[2] Cidnee Stephen. “How to differentiate Your Business from the Competition.” Bplans; Starting a Business Made Easy. Retrieved on 4/5/16 from http://articles.bplans.com/how-to-differentiate-your-business-from-the-competition/#.VwLfWKs56mM.linkedin

Inventions from 1900-1910: Deja vu All Over Again

There are some things I never do on social media. When I get a post with a picture of an old-fashioned pencil sharpener, apple corer or slide rule and it says “If you’ve ever used one of these, Like and Share,” I never do. And it’s not just because I don’t want to admit how old I am.

Looking back in history can be much more helpful than trying to get one up on “those young people today” by showing how difficult you had it and they should be glad they have it as easy as they do! Looking back in history can actually help people deal with the present.

With this in mind we thought we would take a quick look at the first decade of the Twentieth Century and draw some inferences relating to the first two decades of the Twenty-first.

We researched several websites and found that a lot of things happened from 1900 to 1910, inclusive. From the frivolous to the profound, some of the inventions and advances still affect America and the world today. In 1905, the American form of football allowed the forward pass to stop injuries and deaths caused by brute-force tactics such as the “flying wedge.” Today, the National Football League is trying to make reforms that will minimize, or do away with concussions. Also in 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper introducing the idea that the formula for determining energy is a direct ratio with the combined characteristics of mass and the speed of light squared, e=mc2. In that same year, he published a fuller elucidation, his theory of relativity. (We felt like we could use phrases like “fuller elucidation” when we’re talking about such heady stuff.) From those papers have risen arsenals, energy generation, medical uses of radiation, and advances in the physics that run our televisions and computers, among other things.

Speaking of televisions and computers, both of these have their roots in Lee De Forest’s invention of the vacuum tube triode in 1907. “The three terminal setup could serve as an electrical switch. When you changed the voltage traveling to one terminal, you could reduce the current following between the other two terminals. In this way, you could turn it ‘on’ and ‘off.’ That's your 1 and your 0,” says Wired.com in reference to the binary code used in programming.[1]

The more immediate use of the vacuum tube was in building the sets needed to receive that new-fangled thing called radio. De Forest used his vacuum tube to transform “those taps and clicks [of Marconi’s wireless telegraph transmissions] into the broadcast communication system we know today,” according to Wired, adding, “Forest, who also coined the name ‘radio,’ used his invention to send the first over-the-air public broadcast on January 12, 1910.” 

From all this, it becomes apparent that first decade of the twentieth century saw the new arrivals of more than twenty inventions that reshaped life and business. Mercedes (1901) and Ford (1908) took the automobile from the showcase and exhibition track to the roads of America and Europe in mass numbers. Along the way, they also invented the car salesman. 

These inventions made their creators wealthy through marketing. In 1908, Dr. Julius Neubronner combined invention and marketing into one operation. He fitted “tiny timer-driven cameras to pigeons and developed and printed the photos immediately upon the birds’ return, selling them as postcards on the spot,” says Wired. They also say, “Take that, UAV cams!”

Apple Computers is the modern poster child for this symbiotic relationship between innovation and marketing. And that brings us to Digital Marketing, book three in the SMstudy® Guide series, “Today, consumers have multiple ways of searching, learning about, and purchasing various products and services, and e-commerce technology has offered the convenience of secure and instant transactions.”

In 1901, the vacuum cleaner was invented and was soon followed by the door-to-door vacuum salesman. The invention of the radio brought radio advertising, which was one of the methods inventor and businessman George Louis Washington used to turn his 1909 invention of instant coffee into a mansion in Brooklyn and a lodge by the beach in Belford.[2]

Automobiles brought roadside signs and billboards. Walls in every major urban setting became festooned with advertising aimed at the motoring masses. The marketing messages were everywhere. Conventional mass marketing made sure they even arrived in peoples’ mailboxes.

Today’s market seems filled with innovation and invention on steroids. “Consumers can receive messages from any of the several hundred television and radio channels, a variety of print media, including newspapers, magazines, and trade publications; and, online, it’s difficult to check e-mail without various banner ads popping up. The messages are constant,” saysDigital Marketing.

“For businesses, in this age where consumers are continuously provided with choice, the challenge is finding ways to stand out.” SMstudy and the SMstudy® Guide are designed to help sales and marketing professionals and entrepreneurs handle the change in ways that make them stars.[3]

For more informative and interesting articles on sales and marketing, visit www.SMstudy.com/articles

[1] “The Decades that Invented the Future, Part 1: 1900-1910.” (10/12/12) WIRED. Retrieve on 4/13/16 from http://www.wired.com/2012/10/12-decades-of-geek-part-1/

[2] Janie (4/13/2015) “20 Influential Inventions from 1900-1910” JellyShare Retrieved on 4/13/16 from http://www.jellyshare.com/article-194/20-influential-inventions-from-1900-1910.htm

[3] For more information about the SMstudy® Guide, visit http://smstudy.com/SMBOKGuide 

The New Battleground for Brands

Consumers rely on their mobile devices to keep them in-the-know in order to make decisions regarding their personal and professional lives. Think about it, on average you check your smartphone 85 times per day. That’s 85 chances for companies to get their brand seen. And most companies have attempted to optimize this opportunity by expanding their reach through mobile apps, but have fallen flat.

Here’s why: micro-moments, or “intent-driven moments of decision-making and preference-shaping that occur throughout the entire consumer journey.”  

Let me break it down for you a little further. People use their smartphones to purchase products, look up information, and watch videos. Sometimes they just reflexively turn to their device. According to Google, “In these moments, consumers' expectations are higher than ever. The powerful computers we carry in our pockets have trained us to expect brands to immediately deliver exactly what we are looking for when we are looking. We want things right, and we want things right away.”

So what can we do? According to Digital Marketing, book 3 in the SMstudy® Guide, “Rich media ads are image ads incorporating animations or other elements that provide users with ways to interact with the ad. Such elements are often customized to match user behavior. The targeted and personalized nature of the ads is intended to generate greater engagement, resulting in more views and clicks.” These types of ads woo users into making the clicks that get them to the right thing right away.

Here are a couple easy tips for creating the perfect micro-moments for your company to fully get use of those dollars it spends on marketing:

Create a blueprint: we all need to start somewhere, and the best place is the drawing board. Figure out what your target consumers are looking for and when. It is helpful to use Google Analytics to assist this process. With this data you can efficiently decipher what draws consumers to your brand and at what time. Time is an important factor that many companies overlook. Consumers are more likely to search for information on their phone while they are performing a task, so releasing a micro-moment during regular business hours can promote viewers to keep on viewing. Provide your audience with what they want, when they want it.

Understand your consumers: People process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, so give the people what they want, videos! Quick thirty-second to one-minute videos that engage consumers will increase click-rates from the micro-moment to your website. It is important to create the right moments that make consumers want to learn more about your brand.

Create a moment that seamlessly leads to your product. This may seem like a no-brainer, but the content you create, whether it be visuals or text, better give the consumer relevant information about something they are interested in as well as information about your product. There needs to be a connection between the two. A good example of this is Dunkin’ Donuts. The company released an app that not only navigates you to the closest Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shop, but also depicts the wait time at each location, so customers can plan their route to the coffee shop with the least amount of wait time. The app and the micro-moment that was launched with the start of the app seamlessly takes the consumer to the product.

Become one of the successful brands that use micro-moments to market products, and for any questions refer to SMstudy.com to help you with all of your sales and marketing needs.

To read more articles about sales and marketing, visit www.SMstudy.com/articles

When is enough too much? Interpreting Marketing Research and SMstudy

Ever look out at the ocean on a cloudy day? The huge gray mass above stretches out to meet the darker gray mass below at a black line on the horizon?

Standing on that beach, some people feel the ocean’s irresistible allure and comforting power. Others feel like they’re being sucked between two insatiable plates that will crush them at that line in the darkness.

An ocean on a cloudy day is an apt comparison for Big Data and metadata. Big Data stretches its expanding, roiling clouds of content over an equally roiling sea of metadata. Both are massive and powerful. They can both be threatening.

The desire to mine Big Data is making billionaires out of “mining equipment companies,” and references to their algorithms, claims of superior computing speed and boasts of expansive storage capacity are everywhere. Big Data is big content, and that content is getting bigger exponentially. How do we find what we need and want? The answer to that question is to be found in marketing research. A company’s marketing research team will develop expertise in web analytics in addition to what they already know about market analytics. They will need to incorporate more and more disciplines to turn data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom.

Once one begins to get a handle on Big Data—or at least has a plan on how to handle it—he or she faces that almost surreal world of metadata. From the murky world of spying, the world learned there is useful information that is with the content but is not the content. “Metadata is the ‘data about data’, or the data that can be taken from an individual piece of content,” says Emma Battle in a blog for Success 360.[1]

In 2010, Raffi Kirkovian, a Twitter employee, published a “Map of a Twitter Status Object” that identifies 37 discrete pieces of information contained in a Tweet other than the actual content of the tweet.[2]

Four years later that seems to have grown, “At 140 characters a tweet seems tiny, but it can yield a wealth of information. According to Elasticsearch, a startup that builds software to help companies mine data from social media, there are 150 separate points of so-called metadata in an individual tweet,” says Elizabeth Dwoskin in a Wall Street Journal blog.

For marketing researchers this can be a bonanza, “A marketer can look at tweets sent by their target audience and see that the majority of the tweets have times stamped after 5:00 p.m. The marketer can then conclude that the best time to reach their target audience on Twitter may be after 5:00 p.m.,” says Battle.

How do marketing professionals go from data to decisions? Through interpretation. The data that is collected and analyzed “is used to enable the team to identify patterns, draw conclusions, solve the research problem, and achieve the research objectives,” according to SMstudy® Guide – Marketing Research, a book in the SMstudy® Guide series on sales and marketing.[3]

The Guide recommends that data interpretation start with three important inputs: the analyzed data, the research problem and objectives. During the interpretation process, “findings from the research analysis are compiled and reported to the marketing team and senior management and are ultimately used to inform marketing and business decisions.” In deciding what to compile and what to report, the researcher will rely on the research problem and objectives because they “provide a focused and definite direction to the data interpretation process,” according to the SMstudy® Guide.

With focus and direction, the marketing researcher uses three categories of tools to identify patterns and draw conclusions that will meet their company’s or client’s needs: tables, charts and expert judgment. Tables such as spreadsheets by Microsoft and Google help researchers organize large amounts of data. Some, like Microsoft’s Excel, provide a variety of filters and grouping tools for this purpose.

There are thousands of charts available to the market researcher. When one uses the term “chart” to be a category name that includes diagrams and graphs, the number of methods for visually displaying often complex relationships explodes. TheSMstudy® Guide highlights bar charts, stratum charts, pictograms and cartograms for their usefulness and broad-based familiarity.

Once one has an excellent collection of tables and charts, something is still needed to make complete sense of them all: expert judgment. “The ability to appropriately interpret the data develops with experience. Inexperienced researchers can sometimes interpret data in a preferred way because of their comfort level with a given method. A researcher should try to seek the opinions of industry experts and research experts, who can provide valuable inputs in choosing the best way to interpret data within the given constraints,” says SMstudy® Guide’s Marketing Research book.

When relevant inputs are processed with appropriate tools, the researcher draws conclusions that are used to solve the research problem and inform marketing decisions. In short, accurately interpreted research means you know the problem AND the best solution options. And knowing is a great feeling between the clouds and the ocean.

 [1] Battle, Emma. (7/23/14) “Metadata, Mega Data or Big Data What’s in It for Marketers” Success 360. Retrieved on 4/21/16 from www.success360i.com/metadata-mega-data-or-big-data-whats-in-it-for-marketers/   

[2] April 18, 2010 Raffi Kirkorian published a “Map of a Twitter Status Object” http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/TweetMetadata.pdf

[3] For more information about the SMstudy® Guide please, visit http://www.smstudy.com/SMBOKGuide/overview-of-SMstudy-guide

That Which Gets Measured; Determining Metrics with SMstudy

Engineers have a maxim: “That which gets measured gets done.”

This is a significantly more sophisticated way of saying that when the cat’s present the mice work.  From a management point of view, the application of metrics and testing can be an effective tool for keeping senior management in the workroom, even when they’re actually on the beach in Puerto Vallarta.

When metrics and testing are used this way, they lose their effectiveness as tools for quality, learning and improving. When they are used appropriately and are in the hands of the people who will learn the most from them, metrics and testing can enable a marketing team to zig when the market zags and, thereby, outpace the competition. “The Sales and Marketing teams determine the appropriate metrics that will be used to quantify the objectives or outcomes after executing the Marketing Strategy,” saysMarketing Strategy, book one in the SMstudy® Guide series.

The goals and objectives of a product’s marketing strategy have already been decided by senior management, stakeholders and the marketing team before metrics are chosen. While senior management controls the big picture, whoever controls the metrics used in testing and measuring a process controls the process. When one sees the activities involved in getting a product launched, established and profitable in its market segment as a process, it becomes apparent that the best people to choose the appropriate metrics would be the marketing team.

The marketing team will not choose metrics in isolation, however, because the inputs for the determining metrics process include the positioning statement—which describes the value a product or brand offers to its target customers—the pricing strategy, the distribution strategy; industry benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) and the goals that are defined at the corporate and/or business unit or geographic levels.

Metrics for measuring the effectiveness of sales and marketing activities can be broadly classified into four categories: customer reach, brand perception, product availability, and sales and profitability. In addition to these category metrics, a Product Life Cycle Analysis is an important tool in this process because it identifies the metrics that are important at each phase of the sales and marketing timeline. The metrics that the marketing team selects may depend on the size and complexity of the company, type of industry, their own preferences and other factors.

Although there are many possible metrics that can be used to measure the effectiveness of a Marketing Strategy, the SMstudy®Guide suggests that the marketing team should “select and prioritize only a few important metrics that can appropriately determine the success or failure of the objectives outlined in the Marketing Strategy.”

The tools the marketing team can use for determining metrics includes meetings and discussions, during which “various business units or departments within the company work together to ensure that their selected metrics are aligned.” Additional tools the team can use are Product Life Cycle Analysis, the SMART Framework, customer reach metrics, brand perception metrics, product availability metrics, and sales and profitability metrics. More detailed information on each of these tools can be found inMarketing Strategy.

Well-chosen metrics will keep you in control.

For more interesting article on sales and marketing, visit SMstudy.com.