If you have used analytics for a significant amount of time, you will know that it has the power to change the way you do digital marketing. It is a fact when people say web analytics is at the heart of digital marketing. How else will you know what to measure and how to measure? Every business is unique and so are its objectives and goals. When you make an analytics strategy there is no one size fits all. You will have to go through a long process of analysis to understand how your business is reporting the metrics, what strategy is being used and does the strategy need any variations.
From all the things you plan for a perfect analytics setup, one important thing you shouldn’t miss is the measurement plan. Now what is a measurement plan? It is a document that outlines the main objectives of your business and metrics to support those objectives while bringing you close to reality. From our experience in the field of analytics and across industries, we have seen businesses lose sight of their objectives. They are clueless about where their marketing plan is headed, what are they looking to achieve and what they have achieved so far. Not to mention the resources spent on this guesswork burns their pocket. A measurement plan removes the blur lines and draws a more visible picture for better informed decisions.
Here’s how you can create a plan to make sure every activity is accountable, data driven and effective in implementation.
1 – Define Your Objectives
Why did you create a website? Every business website has a specific purpose, whether an ecommerce company or a blog. Knowing what it is, is the first step in marketing. While making a measurement plan you will have to go back to determining why you created this website and what you want to achieve with it.
Start by asking yourself what you want to achieve with your website. Some business have unclear objectives. They want to sell their products if they are an ecommerce company, they want subscriptions if they own a blog or they want to drive traffic and get leads if they are a service based website. Yes one must want to do all of that but the approach here is incomplete. Try not to keep it vague. If you are an ecommerce company your objectives might be as follows:
- Sell gym accessories
- Become a recognized brand nationally
- Grow customer base
Once you have the answer, you have to simply dedicate all your resources and efforts to achieve those objectives.
2 – Set Goals
Once you have your objectives in place, you need goals to achieve each of them. Goals help you reach your objectives. They drive success for your business. Your goals should be 3 things:
- Achievable
- Actionable
- Measurable
You can begin by answering the question – what is it that I should do to achieve objective 1? The answer you receive is your goal. You can question all your objectives in this manner to define your goals. Some objectives will have multiple goals while others will have fewer comparatively. Let’s take the 3 objectives and chalk out goals for them.
3 – Pick Key Performance Indicators
KPI’s help you measure success of your goals. Some say it doesn’t work anymore to pick the basic page views and visits as metrics. In reality, it still works just fine. While selecting metrics to track, pick the ones that will give you the best results for the goal mentioned.
For example: For the goal build an email list, the following KPIs can be measured.
- Form Abandonment Rate – Analyse how many start filling the form but do not complete/submit it. Use the findings to fix the issue.
- Cost per lead – The cost towards getting one lead to fill the form/subscribe.
KPIs are extremely important in helping measure the success of your goals. Having an accurate system of measurement is crucial. This is one area where most businesses fall behind. Often objectives and goals are delivered well but the KPIs are not. This makes a disaster out of the measurement plan and hence does not show desired results.
4 – Set a Target
When we say increase revenue is our goal, do we know how much we want it to increase? A percentage more than earlier is also an increased value. But is it enough? Every goal should have a target against it. The team then can work towards meeting those targets to achieve the set objectives and goals.
Without a target, you are pulling the strings aimlessly not knowing what is good enough. Getting 2 million subscriptions for your email list sounds good but what if your aim was 5 million? Was it good enough then? Thus, it is imperative to give every goal a number so as to make the team aware of where they have to reach and what they have to cross. It also makes measuring success an easier task. You can use company’s historical data and industry standards to determine the target for each goal.
5 – Reporting
Reporting usually eats up a lot of your time and energy. It’s best to decide one format and frequency of reporting. Most businesses prefer reporting by creating custom reports with GA where they pick and choose the relevant metrics from excessive data. There are a few that build their own software or opt ones like Fresh Egg that build custom reports for them with a variety of solutions and automated dashboards.
Whatever you choose to use, you must make sure that it is user friendly. It shouldn’t complicate things for the one who is reading as well as the one who is compiling. It should have all the necessary and relevant metrics. And it should be able to deliver actionable insights.
Conclusion –
Finally, it also depends on maintaining your plan. Make sure you stick to your plan and do not deviate. You can always optimize it if you feel some things are not working for you or the trends have changed. Making a measurement plan is not the end. In fact, it is just the beginning. It is followed by the never-ending task of maintaining and keeping up with it.
