One of the top three things people ask me is how you measure the effectiveness of your communication activity. My answer is that, without knowing what your current marketing and communications activities are, and how they are performing, it’s impossible to know where to focus your energy and resources. Lots of people trip up on this first step.
Many growing businesses struggle to generate enough revenue to keep their doors open. Even the most successful businesses often operate on a thin financial margin, making it difficult to invest in or make a case for the marketing, advertising, and customer service that can drive more business and increase sales. Just as you wouldn’t drive without checking your rearview mirror, you shouldn’t launch a marketing campaign without knowing where you are along the road.
So, in today’s podcast, I’m going to share a simple tool that will enable you to track your comms and measure how it performs, thus improving your outcomes.
Let’s dive in!
Links mentioned in today’s episode
My simple measurement framework
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Full Transcript (unedited)
One of the top three things people ask me is how you measure the effectiveness of your communication activity. My answer is that, without knowing what your current marketing and communications activities are, and how they are performing, it’s impossible to know where to focus your energy and resources. Lots of people trip up on this first step.
Many growing businesses struggle to generate enough revenue to keep their doors open. Even the most successful businesses often operate on a thin financial margin, making it difficult to invest in or make a case for the marketing, advertising, and customer service that can drive more business and increase sales. Just as you wouldn’t drive without checking your rearview mirror, you shouldn’t launch a marketing campaign without knowing where you are along the road.
So, in today’s podcast, I’m going to share a simple tool that will enable you to track your comms and measure how it performs, thus improving your outcomes.
Let’s dive in!
Maybe when you set out to build your brand, you had a few goals in mind. You wanted to attract new customers, build awareness, and generate leads.
But, you’ve realised that you can’t reach everyone with your current marketing approach, you’ve refined your message, and you’ve launched a few campaigns, but you’re not sure where to focus your energy next.
There are so many channels to choose from, and you’re often overwhelmed by the amount of information available. The best thing you can do is set aside time to learn about your current marketing performance and where you can make improvements.
Firstly how to go about it
I use a really simple model that I’ve adapted over the years from one that I used when I worked in UK government communications. There are lots of tools out there, but I know this one works for me:
The most important thing is to start monitoring now. And secondly to separate outputs from outcomes or value-added.
I use an adapted model from UK Gvo comms, which was originally taken from the AMEC measurement framework.
- Log the work you did to prepare for the comms activity you undertook. That’s the input.
- Then you look at the work you produced. That’s the output.
- And then the third thing is the work and the impact it had. That’s the outcome.
It’s important that you measure the outcome as well as output because this is the crucial bit that means you were measuring the activity against your business goals, not just on putting content out there.
For example, an output might be delivering an event or online webinar.
The input to get you to that point would be the content you produce such as copywriting, gathering assets, producing those materials, and graphic design. If you had speakers, then briefing speakers would go on the list too. Maybe if it was an event where you were showcasing your products, you would have had to develop material for your stand.
The outcome from putting on that event, or going to an event and having a presence there, might be five sales leads or interested parties. If it was a recruitment event, you might have people who would be really interested in working in your business.
Now we dig deeper into the effectiveness of your comms activity.
When you’ve perfected this approach, then you can look more deeply at how your comms are performing. Look at the reactions and what people do with the information you put out there.
In an event, for example, this might include an increase or decrease in signups to a webinar.
- How did they engage with your content?
- Did it cause a reaction?
- Did it have the desired effect?
- How long did they spend on the event landing page?
- Did they spend long enough to read all the content that was on that page?
- Did they share your content?
- Are they sharing it?
- How many tickets did you sell?
This helps you track the relevance and effectiveness of the materials you produced against whether or not they resonated in a way that you wanted them to.
Secondly – why should you bother?
3 reasons:
- How will you know if you’ve succeeded or not?
- How will you know what to spend your money on?
- How will you find the right team with the skills you need to support you?
When you know what is working for you, then you know what skills you need to recruit for, or what you want to buy in to support your business.
If you’ve tested something and found it works well but it’s too time-consuming for you to sustain without help, you know you have a case for investing in it. Having the right resources in place, including people with the right skills, will make marketing your business more effective.
This approach is taken from the Amec framework, and I came across it when I worked in UK Gov comms. The gov comms teams have to prove every penny of spending public money, so having a clear framework is really important.
If you want 1:1 advice and insight on how to be more strategic with your plans, get in touch to see how I can help you. I added a link in the show notes today to a template framework for you to give it a go. I would love to know how you got on.