As I continue to present what I consider to be the essential guiding principles for business owners who want to market themselves effectively, based upon The 16 Monumental Secrets of Guerilla Marketing presented by Jay Conrad Levinson in his national bestseller Guerilla Marketing, the next principle is measurement.

This is a tricky one, primarily because of how the human mind gathers and stores information from external stimuli.  The subjective nature of how we interpret and retain the messages we are bombarded with, let alone that of the prompts that would lead us to sharing this information with others or pinpointing exactly where we were exposed to the data we remember, leads to difficulty in tracking as inconsistencies are inevitable. We are constantly picking up information from our environment and storing it, even if we don’t know we are.  Marketing harnesses the brain’s power of perception and utilizes this exact process to embed a message in the minds of consumers.  This may lie dormant until a prompt comes along and the information is recalled; you never know when you’ll need it or the opportunity will arise to pass your knowledge along.

Here are a couple examples of common measurement strategies and why they may not be as accurate as you’d hope:
Tracking Phone Number – So you’ve added a special line just to use in your marketing.  Now you’ll be able to tell if your marketing is effective by the amount of phone calls you receive, right?  Wrong.  You may get some direct response, but not many people will be calling you prior to doing a few minutes of easy online research first.  So they go to your website or Facebook to check you out, and then…they see your business phone number and make contact.  Your special number is long forgotten by this point.  Thanks to the power of smartphones we don’t need to write down a phone number, we just search for a business by name and the phone number pops right up.  This very likely isn’t your designated marketing number either.

Surveying Your New Clients – When onboarding, many businesses measure the strength of their marketing efforts by asking their new clients how they were referred.  Unfortunately for business owners, accuracy isn’t of the utmost importance to anyone else and many times people will unintentionally misdirect.  Why?  Most often it’s because they can’t pinpoint the one message that was the tipping point in their decision.  Especially for those who are utilizing a healthy media mix where each different piece and platform for exposure reinforces their whole message.

The response you intend to generate needs to be clear before you even address how you will measure it (or if it can be measured).  If a marketing campaign is effective it will be memorable, yes, but most of all it will create word of mouth.  According to Nielsen, a leading global information and measurement company, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising.  While it’s hard to believe that I’d trust my Uncle Ernie over a professional in the field when making a purchasing decision, here’s why I would:  I already know he has my best interests at heart and has nothing to gain or lose from my ultimate decision, so I’d certainly be open to letting him steer me in the “right” direction.  In general, we poll as many people in our family, workplace and group of friends/acquaintances before we make any big decision with our hard earned dollars.  These recommendations are heavily impacted by the marketing messages that the referring party has been exposed to.  While a lot of word of mouth referrals do come from past jobs well done and experiences with a company, a healthy number still come from the credibility, branding, and top of mind recognition that exposure through marketing brings to the table. Your best bet with measurement is friendly conversation; you’ll be better able to discern what led the customer to you and 99% of the time you’ll find it’s not one simple answer but a complex network of prompts.

All things considered, people choose to do business with who they know, like and trust.  You may not be able to put an exact number on it, but if you’re consistently branding yourself and breeding familiarity with your marketing efforts, you’ll be able to measure your results in the best area—profit!


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