Almost all areas of business are now engaged with customer understanding and business performance data. It has become essential for marketing teams themselves to position their strategy and budgets within educated assessments based on marketing data.
A measurement strategy in itself is a definition of how data will be used to understand how business goals are being met. Business goals and the wider context of how they drive the business need to be collated, appraised and prioritised.
This 2,000 word guide to discovering requirements when forming a marketing measurement strategy is taken from Econsultancy’s The Fundamentals of Marketing Measurement and Analytics, a Best Practice Guide. It includes sections on understanding responses, what to ask when measurement planning, and how to consolidate knowledge.
A broader chapter of the report features sections on the role of data in marketing planning, selecting what to measure, and completing the plan. Consult the Best Practice Guide for much more including configuration and tools, analysis, and testing and optimisation.
The purpose of measurement strategy
Providing the backbone structure upon which to apply the detail of what is being measured, why, how and by whom, the purpose of the measurement strategy is to:
- Formalise business objectives to give a focal point for any analysis or decision making
- Structure plans by breaking down objectives into appropriate indicators or models that can then be used to gauge performance and answer business questions
- Define data collection requirements in order to supply these models or indicators
- Instruct teams as to governance requirements, roles and responsibilities, technology plans and communication requirements.
The importance of discovery
“Doing really good discovery is always really important. Don’t leap into trying to build a solution before you understand the needs of your users, how something is going to fit for them and what it’s actually going to deliver. Look at it in the round and consider ‘how is this going to work in reality?’.” – Mary Jeffries, Head of Data Operations and Solutions, Dentsu Aegis Network.
Collating business goals and the wider context of how they drive the business requires input from stakeholders outside of the marketing team. Key stakeholders should have the opportunity to contribute, not only to ensure that a wide, contextual view is taken, but also to inform how to share the knowledge back out across the organisation. A consultative approach to this process is ideal, taking the form of three stages – understanding requirements, understanding responses, and knowledge consolidation.
