How to Evaluate Digital Marketing Campaign?

The reason why most of the digital marketing campaign fails to create an impact is not the lack of banner ad or TV spot, neither it is the because of the people involved. (Well, most of the time) The actual reason is the lack of an objective, a definite goal. This is what differentiates a winner from a loser.

Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction – Kenichi Ohamae

Below is a simple and organized, 5 step process which will help you understand more about the Digital Marketing & Management Model.

• • Step 1 – To realize the business objectives beforehand and set the long-term guidelines for the work we are doing. Project managers play a key role in this step.

• • Step 2 – To create unique goals for each business objective. Executives lead the discussion, you’ll play a contributing role.

• • Step 3 – To write down the real potential indicator. You will play a key role here but you also need contribution from a ‘data person’.

• • Step 4 –  Organization leaders play a key role here to set identifying targets for each KPI, with input from Marketing and Finance.

• • Step 5 – The final and most important step is to analyze the behavior/ outcomes and productivity of people. This will help you understand why you succeeded or failed.

Before we understand each step, in detail, let’s brief ourselves with some very crucial factors.

A complete Digital Marketing & Measurement Model will focus on three key areas of your marketing, and in each answer the cluster of questions provided:

1. Acquisition

What steps are you taking to get traffic for your website/ YouTube Video or whatever you are building? Are you looking at all the three components of prosperous acquisition: Earned, Owned, Paid media? Where are you putting maximum efforts?

2. Behavior

What is the real-time experience you are expecting the customer to have? What are they going to watch or what actions are they supposed to take in your website? Do you want to build loyal customers who should return again and again or will you focus more on attracting new customers?

3. Outcomes

What are the conversions that you are expecting? Will they be in the form of downloads, phone calls, online leads, subscription or sign ups? Will you be focusing more like an e-commerce website where you try to sell your products or will you be a serving website?

In simple words: Why are you undertaking the digitalised strategy?

Before proceeding any further, I hope that you Digital Marketing and Measurement Model cover all these questions and you are absolutely clear about what you want and what you don’t. If your model doesn’t answer these questions please revise them because a solid base will ensure your victory in the long run.

Let’s look at a real example of the 5-step process to solidify this concept.

Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value. Philip Kotler

Step One: Realizing the business objectives

Why does your website/campaign exist?

This is a difficult question to answer because it requires more thinking that you might anticipate. If you do it right at the end of step one you’ll have something that looks like this:

The objective of any discussion should be to get the clear answers. Once you have brainstormed the ideas with your seniors and have a clear understanding. This is how the objectives will look: Create awareness, generate leads and highlight events.

Your objectives should always be DUMB:

D – Doable.
U – Understandable.
M – Manageable.
B – Beneficial.

Always go for the real doable objectives. Always be realistic with you

So, are your objectives dumb? 

Step two: To create unique goals for each business objective

With the management on the top, along with the marketers and analysts, think about the small objectives, goals that will together complete your DUMB objectives.

Here’s our model, after going through some of the acquisition, behavior questions with stakeholders.

There is should be clarity between goals and how to proceed towards the goals.

These goals not only provide clarity, but they also contain specific marching orders for what the Marketers and Analysts need to get done.

If the goals identified don’t cover all the jobs the site/campaign is doing then you might need to revisit your work.

Step three: To write down the key performance indicator (KPI)

Finally, this is your part. You’ll be the ideas leader here.

A metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives. This is probably the simplest way to describe KPI.

For each goal, sweat, and find the most hyper-relevant KPI. This is what it will look like:

Here’s specific guidance to help you look for smart KPIs:

Invest time in finding the right KPIs, this will help you in the market big time.

Step four: Identify the Targets

These are the pre-defined values you’ve set for your goal which will ultimately finalize your success or failure.

Based on your targets, you will have different campaigns. Confused?
Case 1: Well imagine you created a video on YouTube. Your target is to reach 5 Million views.
Case 2: Here your target is 500k views.

So, will your advertisement campaign be the same for both of them? No, right! If you get 1 Million views in Case 2, you’ll be happy as your objectives were completed and you did much better than you expected. But if you get the same result in Case 1, won’t you be sad?

This is why you need Targets.

Targets can come from past performance review (how you did last time you / someone did something similar). They can come from efforts.

Your Digital Marketing & Measurement Model will now look like this…

Now everyone in your company will have a clear idea of what they are supposed to look forward to. So, when you open Google Analytics or other tools, you’ll instantly know whether you’re performing up to the mark or need to improve.

Step five: Analysis

Like I said before, this is the most important part.

What you must remember is that you are looking for perfection, which here is the hyperfocus. Take some time to consult to the seniors on what is the most important segment of each objective.

After you open GA, study your customers properly. Know the demographics, their behavior, origin, bounce rate and most importantly, what they are interested in. This is how your model will look like if you do everything correctly:

Here, you will understand your customers. Ask yourself what you can do for them so that they will return to you. Build a loyal base.

You know the work you need to put in to reach this point. But then the result will also be fruitful. The insights and value you acquire will help you to grow further as a business. As you grow, you will learn the leadership qualities. On a long run, this is what will make you stand out from others.

Also, prioritize your business focus. Remember, hyperfocus is what we are after.

Two Bonus Items:

The final form of the model along with the Tour Conversions KPI will look like this:

One last gift for you.

Below is the model for a retail e-commerce website with an online and offline presence. This is a different model and will help you understand better:

I hope that these two examples will help you build your own model which will establish your business and make you stand out.

Good Luck!