- Do – Set Goals
- This may seem basic but it’s difficult to measure performance if there isn’t a defined goal or goals. Once you’ve set your goal you can then determine how to measure your performance against it.
- Don’t – Start down a path w/o a clear end
- If you never know what the finish line is you’ll never get there. Having a goal and the unit of measure to determine success has to exist.
- Do – Determine Success Metrics
- How are you going to know you’re doing good or doing bad? It can be challenging at first but determining what it’s going to take to reach your goal (see above) is necessary.
- Don’t – Base Success Metrics Wholly on Category Competitors
- Each business is different and have unique thresholds for success. Basing your performance against a competitor can lead you down a path of envy. Your awareness, velocity and reach is different and a response rate of 1% may mean success in company A whereas in company B .08% is considered successful. My point; Each company is different and have their own thresholds of success/failure. Understanding metrics and benchmarks in your space is important, but each company is different.
- Do – Test
- Jumping in head first to a a new campaign or program shouldn’t be done blindly. Base decisions on tests of a new medium or vehicle and then put more chips on the table.
- Don’t – Assume
- Just because the sales rep who sold you the ad space says it’s the best thing since sliced bread doesn’t make it true.
- Do – Invest in Trackable Media
- Newspaper ads, really? Spend your time and money investing in programs that are trackable. There are a lot out there that are easy to implement. Some examples include: CPC (Linkedin, Google, Bing, Yahoo, Re-targeting), email, QR codes (yawn) and specialty phone lines. If you have to use a print ad make sure you have a specific domain* or form or have a specific, trackable phone line.
- Don’t – Invest in Non-Trackable Media
- See above.
*This can be accomplished a couple of ways: If you have long, dynamic urls that pass campaign variables you can use something like www.yoursite.com/offer and redirect to you query string domain using htaccess or something similar. You can also just use a specific form or form handler.