Measuring your Marketing ROI – Where to begin?

Question: What are you trying to accomplish with your marketing?

Simple question right? Not always. I ask it at every first meeting with a potential client and I’m often surprised at their answers. In many cases, I don’t get an answer. Instead, I get an ambiguous response like: ‘We’re trying to create awareness’ or ‘We want to build our brand’. I suppose, technically, both of those responses are answers. But, neither is clear enough to provide any real direction.

I’ve had the good fortune of working with some brilliant marketers. No two uses the same approach to getting things done, but all have two things in common. They know precisely what they want to achieve. And, when asked what they’re trying to accomplish with their marketing, their response is crystal clear.

To help ensure my marketing objectives are clear and easily understood by others, I create a simple one-page project outline for each campaign I work on. Then, I use the acronym S.M.A.R.T coined by Paul J. Mayer to evaluate the outline.

S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Tangible, and it’s a great tool for refining and clarifying your goals and objectives.

For example, I recently worked with a client to outline a lead acquisition program. My one-page project outline began as follows:

Goal: With a fixed budget of $9,000, determine the viability of creating 300 new sales leads in 90 days by driving registrations for online seminars.

It continued with a brief strategy and tactical overview followed by cost highlights and some additional assumptions. When I finished, I went back to the goal to consider if it was specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and tangible before getting feedback from others and finally delivering it to my client.

Creating S.M.A.R.T. marketing objectives and being able to clearly communicate your plans is the first step to creating marketing programs that can prove a return on investment. It’s that simple. Know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and be able to articulate it clearly to anyone who asks. With this you’ll have taken the first step towards measuring a marketing return on investment.