Category Archives: Measurement
Census 2010: Portrait of America
by Dana Coleman on January 4, 2011 | no comments
in Marketing, Measurement, Survey
Census Data Helps Guide Marketing Decisions
On Dec. 21, 2010, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke delivered the 2010 U.S. Census resident population and apportionment counts to President Obama and unveiled the official results to the public. This marks the twenty-third time this once-a-decade ritual to count the nation’s population has been completed since 1790.
As of Apr. 1, 2010, the total U.S. resident population of the 50 states and the District of Columbia was 308,745,538, up 9.7 percent from 281,421,906 in 2000. Regionally, the areas of greatest growth were the South and the West. Nevada gained the most as a percentage of its 2000 count, up 35.1 percent, while Texas gained the most numerically up 4,293,741 residents. California remains the most populous state with 37,253,956 residents and the least populous state is Wyoming at 563,626.
The statistics assembled through the Census process provide the basis for decision-making regarding the distribution of more than $400 billion in federal funds for programs like education and health care. The results are also used to determine the redistribution of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives proportionate to the population of the states. In the 2010 Census, 10 states lost congressional seats while eight gained. Today, each member of the U.S. House of Representatives represents about 710,767 people, up from 34,000 people per district when the first U.S. Census was conducted.
In addition to the decennial count of the resident population mandated by the U.S. Constitution, the Census Bureau conducts other surveys to collect data about the nation’s people and economy. Marketers and business owners can also use economic data gathered by the Census to target households, gauge competition, calculate market share and evaluate potential new markets.
One ongoing Census survey of particular interest to marketers is the American Community Survey. The ACS is sent to about three million households in the U.S. and Puerto Rico every year to measure the changing social and economic characteristics of the U.S. population. For example, using ACS data, a marketer or business owner could determine how many high-income households with children live near a specific retail location. The Census Bureau also provides downloadable user guides written specifically for different audiences, including businesses.
To learn more about the Census and the portrait it paints of our changing nation, visit www.census.gov.
Make Data the Foundation of Your Next Email Marketing Plan
by Ashley Webb on December 9, 2010 | no comments
in Email Marketing, Marketing, Measurement
The concept of collecting data isn’t new. Using it is.
Marketers inherently know that data should fuel marketing plans and overall business decisions. Thus, collecting data from customers has never been a problem, but, achieving visibility and usability with that data has not always been possible.
Today, interactive companies like, Emma, Mail Chimp and Blue Sky make it easy to collect data and analyze your campaign results. But you shouldn’t stop there. Implementing the following tactics will help you easily utilize the customer/subscriber information you’ve compiled.
Assess your data
Making a change to the way you currently use data starts with an assessment. What data do you have access to? Where is it coming from? Understand what tools you have to work with before you take action.
Implement a program
Decide how you’re going to use your data. What do you want to accomplish? How often will you revisit your data? Taking action starts with specific goals.
Measure often
After you’ve begun using your data, don’t forget to measure your program’s effectiveness. Measure often, adjust often, and test, test, test. What’s “moving the needle?” What’s impacting your bottom line? If you’ve sent a communication to subscribers that doesn’t seem to be impacting your business, discontinue it and try something new.
Investigate
Use your data to work backwards. Track how many of your customers are clicking through to content, browsing online, making purchases, etc. By understanding what information is driving your click-through rates, you can find out what it is your subscribers are clicking through to. From that point, drive conversions using that content.
The most sophisticated messages in the world won’t resonate with your customers if you don’t understand their preferences and behaviors. When your interactive marketing campaign is built on data – instead of using it as a simple afterthought – programs are more effective, more targeted, and more successful.
How are you using data to improve your interactive marketing campaigns?
Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing Open Rates
by Ashley Webb on August 17, 2010 | 2 comments
in Marketing, Measurement, Newsletters and E-Newsletters
Have you invested the time and money on an email campaign that is delivering less than extraordinary results? Racking your brain on ways to improve the open rates of your latest email marketing masterpiece? Well rest assured! I’ve put together a short list of important points that could immensely impact your campaign results. Before hitting the irreversible Send, consider the following:
1. The Subject Line:
- Have your company’s name or your connection with the recipient visible in the subject line.
- Keep the subject line concise – no more than 8 to 10 words.
- Let the recipient know there is valuable information in the message – but don’t give away all the details.
- Make it timely.
- Conduct an experiment by creating two versions of the same message and change only the subject line. Split your audience into two groups and send one subject line to one group and one to the other and see how it affects your open rates.
2. The Design:
- According to MarketingSherpa’s research, more than half of email recipients use a horizontal preview pane; therefore it is important to have the most important information in the top four inches.
- The same survey found that recipients read more of an email’s text if graphics are included near the top – this could be a custom designed stationary or branded masthead.
- Use a font and colors that are easy on the eyes. Simple, intentional font and style choices can help grab and keep your readers’ attention.
3. Distribution:
- Mailings that go out between Tuesday and Thursday typically receive better open rates and results.
- Consider your recipients’ time zone. Avoid sending the email first thing in the morning or late in the evening.
- Always personalize your message.
- Within 8 – 10 days resend the message to recipients who did not open it the first time.
Have you seen a particularly effective email campaign that’s intrigued you lately?
Also, check out some of Jessica’s latest posts about effective email marketing campaigns.
Old Spice Sales Prove Campaign's Success
by Jan Morrison on August 12, 2010 | no comments
in Advertising, Branding, Measurement
As you now know, I love the Old Spice branding campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa, because all of the elements are funny, smart and speak effectively to its audience. But has the approach worked to increase sales? After all, it is product sales that keep Mr. Mustafa and his chiseled abs around to entertain us.
According to AdWeek and Brandweek, who reviewed data from market researchers Nielsen and SymphonyIRI, the Old Spice campaign has helped Procter & Gamble significantly increase sales of its “man-scented” body products.
Nielsen reports that sales of Old Spice Body Wash have increased by 11 percent within the last year. The speed at which overall product sales have risen since the campaign started in February is even more striking. According to Nielsen, sales increased by 55 percent within the last three months and really jumped by 107 percent within the last month.
Now that we know the campaign worked to increase sales, we can explore how it actually happened.
1. Effective advertising. Wieden + Kennedy is to be commended (and they have by earning several awards) for creating ads that communicate with the target audience with creative messaging. These ads made people laugh, so they told their friends and shared online links to the commercial. This helped consumers rethink the Old Spice brand.
2. Leveraging social media to the nth degree. Wieden + Kennedy didn’t just take their witty commercials and slap them on their website and YouTube, then declare victory. They compiled a team of experts in advertising, marketing, writing and social media to leverage Mustafa and his towel across social media in a way that communicated with the brand’s target audience. This team camped out in a studio for days responding via video to tweets, Facebook messages and YouTube comments from fans in real time and posting them for the public to see. In true “Old Spice Man” fashion, these videos were funny, ridiculous and entertaining. This kept the brand top of mind and raised awareness among the target audience.
3. Brand consistency. The Old Spice Man and his witty bravado are not relegated only to the TV screen. His face and style permeate the Old Spice website and product packaging, as well. This helps consumers connect what they have seen on TV with what they see on their computers and the shelves.
4. Time frame. Old Spice executed all of these steps within a perfect time frame. The commercials and social media endeavors weren’t hard and fast, but they weren’t drawn out either. This helped keep consumers engaged and interested.
5. Brand attachment. All of these elements led to people wanting more of the Old Spice man and his brand of humor. Reddit.com created a voicemail generator without involving Procter & Gamble at all. Now you can have the Old Spice man in your voicemail and help raise brand awareness on behalf of the company. While part of me thinks that Old Spice should have thought of this themselves, I also think that this involvement by an outside organization lends a certain amount of credibility to the brand’s popularity.
Hopefully, this won’t be the last of the Old Spice Man. I hope we see him in more commercials and social media interaction. I hope his burgeoning acting career does not take the Mustafa out of the Old Spice Man.
What do you hope to see next in the campaign?
Use Your E-Newsletter Analytics
by Jessica Turner on July 13, 2010 | no comments
in Marketing, Measurement, Newsletters and E-Newsletters
Many companies have email newsletters down pat. They know that communicating through email on a regular basis is a cost-effective way to connect with their target audience.
However, few companies take email newsletters to the next level by analyzing the open and click-through rates.
Recently, I was impressed by this email I received from Red Envelope.
Every Thursday the company does a special, one-day sale.
An item that was on sale interested me and I clicked through, but opt-ed not to purchase the item.
The next day I received this email.
Clearly, they had taken the email addresses of the people who had opened the email, cross-referenced it against the accounts that had purchased from the site and sent out an appropriate follow-up.
Brilliant.
Next time your company sends an email blast, look at the analytics with a fresh perspective.
Who clicked on the links? What does this say about them? What are they interested in? How can you better target these people?
The answers may lead to new leads and bigger sales.
What can you company do to better maximize your email newsletter data?
Yes, Virginia, You Can Measure The ROI On Social Media
by Paula Lovell on May 25, 2010 | 4 comments
in Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media
It firmly resonates with me when marketers take a measured approach to social media. “Measured” being the operative word.
At last weekend’s annual conference of Public Relations Society of America’s Counselors Academy, I was gratified and relieved to hear so much discussion centered around the importance of ROI in social media. The point being: Tuning in and “listening” to customers’ or stakeholders’ blogs and tweets means nothing if an organization doesn’t actively react to the public discussion and participate in the ongoing dialogue. Even more importantly, listening and reaching out to customers STILL doesn’t matter unless there is a return on the investment. It’s not just about getting attention for your product, your idea or your company story. It’s about real ROI like: new customers, increased sales, or improved understanding and acceptance of an organization’s story during a crisis.
The exercise of measuring the success of social media efforts is no different from what PR practitioners and marketers have been doing for decades. It’s a matter of aligning a marketing activity (in this case the utilization of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.) with the goals and objectives of the organization. It’s about making sure that what you are measuring really matters.
I am fascinated by the number of tools that measure a lot more than website hits and blog reads. With a few clicks, you can measure the sentiment of large groups of comments or how many people in your email list utilize Twitter, Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn , along with their age, gender and even what they read or shop and what organizations they belong to. But those are still just tools that inform you about who is willing to listen to your story and how best to reach out to them.
The most important part of any social media program is to integrate it into the larger strategic communications plan. Who is your audience? Where do you find them and, most importantly, what do you want them to do? It takes time, commitment and resources, but only by measuring the change in your audiences’ behavior as a result of a social media effort can you get the real return on your investment. Engagement and eyeballs on your site just don’t cut it anymore.
We’ve seen some great social media returns. Let me know if you’ve got a good social media story to share.
Surveys: An Effective Way to Gauge What An Audience Thinks
by Robin Embry on May 18, 2010 | no comments
in Corporate Communications, Measurement, Survey
Before launching into a marketing or PR campaign it’s a good idea to “get your arms around” audience opinions and perceptions, and surveys can help you do this.
For instance, you may want to determine if customers like your product and are they pleased with your delivery method and customer service. Or, maybe it’s time for an internal employee campaign to help boost productivity. In this case, before you move forward with the campaign you might want to know if your employees have the appropriate tools to effectively do their job.
The goal of any survey is to capture valuable information, so putting careful thought into the survey questions is imperative. If a client asks us to develop a survey, we spend the majority of our time conducting research through focus groups and phone and onsite interviews to ensure we develop valuable questions that will produce meaningful results.
Online surveys are fast becoming the method of choice. They are easy to set up and easy to send…as long as you have an accurate email distribution list. We recently conducted an employee communications survey (which I must brag had a 95% response rate…compared to the average internal survey rates that range from 30-40%) and I spent several days researching numerous companies. Here’s what I found.
If you need a fairly basic survey and you don’t need to cross tab your results, then I suggest www.surveymonkey.com. For the employee communications survey we just implemented, we needed a more sophisticated reporting system that could cross tabulate the roughly 50 questions and decided to use www.keysurvey.com. Based on the employee feedback, we will be able to provide the client with recommendations that will influence communication efforts in the long-term future.
Surveys are an effective way to determine what your customers are thinking, but choosing good questions and a reliable survey tool will help ensure it is successful.
How Much Should You Spend on Marketing?
by Robin Embry on February 18, 2010 | 1 comment
in Advertising, Marketing, Measurement
Big and small businesses executives know investing in some kind of marketing is imperative, but the question is… how much do you spend?
Recently one of my clients was preparing for a budget planning meeting and asked me how much they should allocate for marketing and advertising. That’s a good question, but the answer depends on what kind of business you are talking about. For instance, organizations like acute-care hospitals have traditionally used the figure of three percent of gross revenues, but not all industries have a standard or best-practices number. In order to answer my client’s question, I conducted some research and discovered this not an easy question to answer. In the process of my search, I did stumble across a few interesting articles and Web sites.
An article in BusinessWeek suggested companies should begin the process by determining the advertising-to-sales ratio in their particular field. Since this information may be difficult to find, the article suggested starting at five percent of your gross revenue and adjusting the projected spending after evaluating market size, media costs, competitor spending and company growth projections. Start-up companies generally tend to spend more of their budget on marketing, and this figure could range from 5-15 percent.
The Web site www.entrepreneur.com also provides an informative article called Calculating Your Ad Budget that provides a numeric formula companies can use to help determine how much they should spend on marketing and advertising.
Developing a marketing budget is a process that most businesses go through on an annual basis. Not only must they determine the right amount to spend on marketing, it’s also crucial to determine a way to measure the success of the marketing efforts and the return on the investment. These efforts will help you determine if your company needs to be more aggressive or can try to reduce the budget the following year.
What Your PR Firm Doesn’t Want You to Know About Google
by Ashley Webb on September 30, 2009 | 2 comments
in Measurement, Public Relations
No one likes to give away trade secrets. But this little PR nugget is too valuable to keep to ourselves.
Google is a PR practitioner’s best friend.
Oh sure, everyone knows that Google provides convenient access and bite-sized information on a wide range of valuable topics. For essentially any industry, you can learn about competitors, research best practices, uncover lawsuits and much more.
But Google offers an amazing service that can also help monitor a company’s presence in the news and on the web.
Google Alerts will automatically notify you anytime new Internet results are discovered that match your criteria. Google searches for the latest relevant results on news sites, blogs, in videos and online groups. It’s a convenient way to keep track of developing news stories, stay current on a competitor or industry or monitor your company’s presence on the web and in the news.
To set up an Alert, simply visit the Google Alerts home page, enter your search terms, the type of alert you’d like (web, news, video, comprehensive, etc.), how often you’d like Google to check for results and your email address. Once you’ve completed these steps, Google will immediately begin its search and notify you automatically anytime new results are discovered.
To search for industry news or to narrow your results, you may want to visit Google’s Advanced Search page to learn how to refine your parameters for more targeted results.
So why should a PR firm handle your media monitoring if you can do it for free?
In most cases, PR firms have access to more robust monitoring services. Such services can be rather costly if purchased direct, but agencies are often able to achieve a volume discount they can pass along to their clients. Through these comprehensive monitoring services, we’re able to:
• access news from subscription-only publications and news outlets that do not publish online;
• execute more sophisticated and targeted searches;
• research past news stories;
• analyze coverage and compare against competitors;
• prepare advertising equivalency reports;
• monitor social media sites.
In the end, it depends on how important monitoring is to you and your company. Google Alerts are a great way to stay on top of company and competitor news, but if you’re looking for the most extensive coverage and analysis, leave it up to your PR pros.
Assess, Diagnose, Plan, Implement and Evaluate: A Nurse's Approach to Public Relations and Marketing
by Jennifer Allen on March 25, 2009 | 11 comments
in Healthcare, Measurement, Social Media
You clinicians out there are probably familiar with the ADPIE (Assess, Diagnose, Plan, Implement and Evaluate) approach to patient care. Because nursing is so deeply ingrained in my psyche after 16 years in the industry, I still use this approach as a strategic planning tool for our health care and non-health care PR / Marketing clients.
The acronym illustrates the importance of gaining an in-depth understanding of our clients’ businesses, by investing time and resources into the assessment and diagnostic phases, before developing a strategic plan of action.
Picture this: As marketing and communications counsel, we assume the role of the physician. Before we jump into a treatment regimen (strategic marketing, communications or crisis management tactics), we must complete a thorough evaluation of the patient’s (client’s) signs and symptoms and correctly identify (or diagnose) the issues.
Here’s how it works:
Assessment
During this time we develop an in-depth understanding of the company. The information we gather during this phase will serve as the foundation for the strategy and tactics to come. This process may include a review of:
- Company mission, values and goals
- Business plan
- Target audiences
- Competitive landscape
- Factors of influence within the industry
- Internal and external audiences
- Success of past marketing efforts
Diagnosis
The diagnosis will be unique for every client based on the “signs and symptoms” identified in the assessment phase. Diagnoses may lead to a focus on:
- Employee / Internal communications
- Advertising strategy
- Public relations
- Crisis planning / Crisis management
- Reputation management
- Online presence
- Website functionality, appearance and ease of navigation
- Collateral development
- Media training
- Media relations
Planning
During the planning phase, we formulate an action plan. As with the diagnosis, plans will be unique to each client and may include:
- Media relations
- Print media / Editorial promotion
- Electronic and broadcast media
- Social media
- Sponsorship opportunities
- Advertising and promotional campaigns
- Community relations
- Strategic networking
- Cross promotions
- Website improvements
- Search engine optimization
- Collateral development
Implementation
During this phase we put the tactics outlined in the master plan into action by methodically developing resources to accomplish the objectives identified in the plan. Just a few examples are:
- Development and distribution of news releases
- Develop feature stories and targeted pitches
- Develop marketing materials
- Website redesign
- Ad development and distribution
Evaluation
During the evaluation phase, we identify efforts that have been most successful as well as opportunities to modify those that have not produced desired results. ROI can be tricky, but there are always methods to monitor results. Considerations may include:
- Increase in website traffic
- Increase in sales
- Media coverage of success stories
- Calls in response to ads
- Improved internal and external relations
Although the assessment, diagnostic and planning phases may require a significant amount of time and resources, it is indeed a wise investment. After all, would you let a surgeon you never met or who had no knowledge of your medical history operate on you?
