If you are looking forward to clarity on your baseline, where your ‘goldilocks zone’ lies, and how you can deploy marketing funds most effectively, you need to set up a measurement system.
It is not a once-off project, but an ongoing discipline: collecting the right data, validation, regular testing and analysis. Over time, this enables you to see both short-term revenue impact and long-term growth.
At the leadership level, ensure that for each marketing activity, there is a plan to measure its success and the raw data for the measurement is collected.
As a guide:
- Outcomes of each digital campaign can be traced back to its source (channel, platform, message).
- Customer information is captured early – including how they found you, their location, and relevant demographic details.
- Marketing activities are logged by date and region, so outcomes can be linked to when and where spend occurred.
- Broader external events that affect your business (economic, social, competitive, environmental) are recorded and tracked against performance.
- Ensure marketing and business data are recorded in a consistent structure, so you can track changes over time and detect when returns start to diminish.