Article:
3 Tools to Get a Read on Marketing Performance in 30 Days
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
With management chomping at the bit to demonstrate that the company is getting a good return on their marketing investments, CMOs need to know whether new marketing programs are successful in 30 days.
No one seems willing to wait the customary six months to a year anymore. It’s no wonder, really. There's a different kind of urgency to demonstrating early results these days, besides which waiting six months often means it'll be too late to do anything to get maximum performance and meet management expectations.
Here are three tools you can use to get a quick read on the impact of marketing programs in 30 days:
1. Blog hyper-analysis
Use widely-available analysis tools to see if your campaign, program, or new product has inspired online conversation, positive or negative.
What it gives you: In theory at least, a high-performance campaign would generate quantity and you’d like to see something related to the brand message or new product. Could be an early warning if nothing’s happening, if conversation takes a negative turn, or there’s little mention of a new product or something related to the key brand message, for instance.
Set-up time: One week
Predictive validity: Fair
Ball-park costs: $30K
2. Souped-up campaign penetration tracking
Instead of looking at 25 different "awareness" metrics, we recommend developing a single measure that we call campaign penetration which incorporates most of the traditional measures into a single metric.
What it gives you: The advantage to using campaign penetration is that instead of having a bunch of numbers that fluctuate seemingly at random from one quarterly tracking study to the next, you get one number that tells you how a campaign is doing at generating “real” awareness for your brand and its key brand message. It also gives you a much better handle on a campaign’s impact on sales.
Set-up time: Two weeks
Predictive validity: Good
Ball-park costs: $50K
3. Novel applications of simulated test marketing
Simulated test marketing (STM), the single best validated tool in all of marketing research, can help you gauge the ROI of actual campaigns after they’ve been launched.
What it gives you: Though marketers often use them to forecast sales and profits of a new product/service or a new advertising campaign pre-launch, you can also use a cleverly done STM to improve a forecast 30 days post-launch. The idea here is that you can see where you are currently headed based on actual results. If it’s not where you’d expected, you’ve got time to take action.
Set-up time: Four weeks
Predictive validity: Very good
Ball-park costs: $100K
Now naturally, there are a few basic criteria that a program has to meet in order for these tools to give an effective read on performance:
- It’s a new and different campaign or new product.
- It’s a front-loaded effort.
- The media weight behind it is substantial enough to read the results.
- People care about the product category.
With blog hyper-analysis, for example, you’re generally looking at quantity and sentiment. You can imagine if it’s not a new effort, it’s going to be pretty tough to identify any sort of trends a campaign has inspired. Likewise, if there’ not substantial media weight behind a campaign or program, you’d expect to see low awareness for your brand and key brand message.
The big takeaway here is that you DON’T have to wait until it’s too late to do anything about performance to find out how a new campaign or product is doing. These three widely-available tools use different types of data and differing inputs, but all provide you with insights that can help you determine if you’re on your way to making the CEO happy or heading for disaster.
-March 2010
This content was provided by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research. Visit their website at www.copernicusmarketing.com.
Other content shared by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Get More From Advertising Tracking Research
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Advertising tracking research often returns results that don't help marketers: it can take months for tracking numbers to change significantly and even when they do, they provide little insight into why they went up or down. Here are three things you can do today to get more from advertising tracking research tomorrow. Read Article »
Psychographic Profile: What Your Position on the Legalization of Marijuana Might Say About You
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Psychographics include variables related to attitudes, interests, personality characteristics, and values. This psychographic profile looks at a side-by-side comparison of the attitudes, behaviors and demographics of the opposite sides of a hotly debated topic: the legalization of marijuana. Read Article »
Good Versus Bad Market Segmentation
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
The qualities of good market segmentation include the results - does the research yield distinct, proprietary, highly profitable market segments? Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research shares their 5 steps toward good market segmentation. Read Article »
Marketing Myth: Positioning Is No Longer Relevant
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Marketers have lost control of certain aspects of brand communication - it is no longer enough to identify and communicate one brand position. Brands now target specific groups of consumers to ensure their message is relevant, compelling and motivating. One of the most important steps is using customer input, as described in this article. Read Article »
Innovation Needn't Be Such a Scary Proposition For Marketers
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Marketers view innovation as key to combating hard economic times, yet less than half have expressed satisfaction with innovation efforts. Creating a new product includes finding the perfect price: market research helps pin down this element and in turn helps produce a market winner. Read Article »
The Real Mystery of Political Polls
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Ahead of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research looked at the phenomenon of "polling failure" and response bias based on social desirability. Read Article »
Attitudinal and Behavioral Profile of People Who Are In Excellent Health
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Do you start every conversation with litany of what ails you? A behavioral and attitudinal comparison of people who say they are NOT in excellent health vs. those who say they are. Read Article »
You Can Get Marketers To Eat Their Spinach
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Marketers tend to distrust research and data, even though in principle they agree research is good for decision-making. This article shares tips for getting marketers to bring together principle and practice. Read Article »
Study Shows Emotional Connection Currently More Pipe (or Hype) Dream Than Reality
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Brands strive to build an emotional connection with consumers, but how many consumers actually respond to these efforts? This article reveals findings from a study of U.S. consumers about emotional connection to brands. Read Article »
Marketing Decisions Still Made With More Guts Than Brains
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
This article shares findings from a survey of marketing executives and their decision-making approaches - intuitive judgment versus data and research-based. Read Article »
Interview: Adapting Marketing Research Tools for the Digital Age
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Marketing Fray sat down with Copernicus' Eric Paquette, a senior vice president at the firm who's leading the digital charge, and posed three questions about how and what marketers can do to make good digital marketing decisions. Read Article »
Why Doesn't My Market Segmentation Work?
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
This article shares scenarios where you might run into problems with market segmentation. Read Article »
Psychographic Profile: East Coast vs. West Coast Stereotypes
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting & Research
Psychographics include variables related to attitudes, interests, personality characteristics, and values. This article shares insights on East Coast vs West Coast stereotypes. Read Article »
Top 10 Reasons for New Product Failure
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
This article presents reasons why only 10-20% of new products and services succeed. Read Article »
Rolling Out a New Product? Take 3 Steps to Nail Execution
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
While finding the right new product or service is a pretty high hurdle in and of itself, there’s also the marketing plan and the often overlooked execution plan to consider. Here are three steps you can take to keep all the parts of the marketing plan heading in the same direction as you roll it out into market. Read Article »
How to Identify the Most Profitable Targets
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
A top ten list of criteria used to identify financially-optimal targets. Read Article »
Simulated Test Marketing Gets Your New Products/Services Off on the Right Foot
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Simulated test marketing research enables you to experiment and hone in on the best marketing plan. Learn more about this method and its application in this article. Read Article »
"Actionable Insights": Watchword or Buzzword?
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
This article discusses the measurement of the return on marketing research investments and what to with all the “insights” into customers and prospects. Read Article »
Customer Satisfaction in a Slump: Even the Net Promoters Agree
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
This article discusses the the latest statistics from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI). Read Article »
Interview With An Expert: Rolf Olsen on Social Media Listening
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
Social conversation may offer marketers a constant stream of real-time data on trends, unmet customer needs, and campaign and new product performance, but there’s a whole host of questions that marketers still have to answer when it comes to using and applying information gathered via social listening to marketing decisions. Read Article »
10 Need-to-Knows to Find Good Customer Targets in the Digital Age
by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research
In addition to revenue measures, there are other characteristics that make one customer more valuable than another because they’re easier to get and keep, as well as engage as co-marketers. Here are 10 need-to-knows about current and prospective customers that will clearly and definitively guide marketers to good customer targets in the digital age. Read Article »
