6 Reasons why you need a Marketing Measurement Plan
I’m a big believer in the saying from Benjamin Franklin, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. This is why the first thing I do when working with new clients is to create what I called their Social Media Marketing Measurement Plan.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through the 6 reasons why it’s so important to have a social media marketing plan.
What is a Marketing Measurement Plan?
A Marketing Measurement Plan is a document you create that will list out all your marketing tactics and campaigns, then you would outline the objectives of each, the key performing indicators (KPIs), the targets you would like to reach and any additional information on reporting and analysis .
I like to think of the Measurement Plan as your marketing roadmap.
Now that we have a better understanding of what a Marketing Measurement Plan is, let’s discuss the reasons why you really want to spend the time to set one up for your business and/or your clients.
1. Direction
Think of your Marketing Measurement Plan as your Google Maps. In it, you’d put where you want to go and where you’re starting from. The plan will then help you stay on course and get you to your destination in the most effective and efficient way.
A Marketing Measurement Plan requires that you spend time really understanding where you want to go with your business and how your marketing will help you get there.
Having a clear sense of where you want the various marketing campaigns to take your business is extremely important. Without this, how do you truly know if you have reached your goals? Or even what tactics/campaigns you should focus your valuable time on.
The key to this is that you need to be clear as to where you want to go. This is where the second point comes in.
2. Clarity
Being clear on the goals and objectives of your various marketing initiatives will ensure that you focus on your messaging and what you want to accomplish from your posts, ads, campaigns, etc. It will keep you from trying to make the campaigns be or do more than they should.
3. Consistency
A consistent brand message across your various social media and marketing tactics is so important. From the creative you use, the copy and certainly the desired actions you want your audience to take.
When it comes to more technical ways, your Marketing Measurement Plan will ensure that how you’re tracking your various marketing tactics are consistent from campaign to campaign.
This is very useful when you go to analyze the performance of the campaigns from quarter over quarter or year over year.
Consistency also comes into play when it comes to the metrics you use to evaluate performance. You want to make sure that you’re looking at apples to apples and not apples to oranges.
4. Alignment
A Marketing Measurement Plan will ensure that all stakeholders (from yourself to your clients) are on the same page when it comes to the measurement of the social media or marketing tactics. This is so very important as it will set up the expectations of what will be measured and how success will be calculated and determined.
It takes emotions out of the decisions making process and ensures that everyone is in alignment as to what’s a go and what’s a no-go.
The key things to be in alignment are:
The objective of the campaign(s)
Key Performing Indicators (KPIs)
Metrics to evaluate
Targets for tactic
Segments that will be evaluated
5. Optimization
With direction, clarity, and consistency across the various social media and marketing tactics will give you the ability to optimize.
The goal is always to keep iterating and optimizing your campaigns and tactics to ensure that you’re reaching your targets and growing the business. If things are not going as planned, having a pulse on what’s happening will enable you to pivot and make the necessary changes to get you to your goal.
A very important aspect of having the ability to course-correct if needed and to always have an understanding of what is going on with your campaigns is the result of the last point.
6. Automation
Automation is the holy grail and it will make your life infinitely easier. Trust Me!
No more going to each platform to pull data manually, no more worrying that you forgot to pull certain numbers at the start or end of the month.
When your client asks you “How are the campaigns doing?”, you can quickly and easily pull up the KPIs and metrics that you have identified in your Marketing Measurement Plan and confidently state how it’s performing and whether it’s on track to hit the target.
There you have it, the 6 reasons why you need to have a Marketing Measurement Plan. Whether you’re a social media manager and managing multiple clients or an entrepreneur managing your own marketing campaigns, having a plan will ensure that you’re marketing helps you reach your business goals and grows your business.
Next week, I’ll be walking you through the steps to build your own Marketing Measurement Plan.
Stay Tuned!
As always, if you have any questions or would like to share your own experiences with creating a marketing measurement plan, just leave a comment.
Happy Measuring and Analyzing!