How Can We Tell If the Marketing Campaign is Working?

The process of planning an advertising campaign begins with clear goal setting. Research should be engineered to yield concrete directives for the campaign and to define the most direct media channels to deliver your mar-com to the target market. The preliminary budget can be generated to include the media and frequency scheduling plans for all of the different channels and platforms. Further research may be needed to clarify the budgetary constraints and codify the budget. Then production of the various advertising vehicles can begin. Post- production, vehicles should be pre-tested and any changes made. The campaign can then begin and will be steadily evaluated to insure it lives up to planned expectations. Adaptations can be made to improve performance, if warranted, as the campaign runs its prescribed duration. After the run time a post mortem evaluation will take place to determine the campaign's overall success and be used as a starting point for the next campaign cycle.

There are many pitfalls around the problem of accurate ROI monitoring. I have found three reasons why mar-com monitoring can be complicated. One, it is hard to decide on an appropriate metric, or measure, of marketing communications. Two, there are complexities to collecting meaningful data. Three, it is difficult to assess the effects of individual factors in determining overall marketing communications successes and failures. Each method, and each measured factor, may exhibit their own strengths and weaknesses. There are no unambiguous factors that can be readily relied upon. No single metric can be counted on to deliver accurate monitoring in every situation.