You’ve heard the term ROI – Return on Investment.  Naturally, the term ROMI would mean Return on Marketing Investment.

Dr. Deming said, “If you can’t measure something, you don’t know what you’re doing.” Therefore, if you not measuring ROMI, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Failing to measure something means you could be losing money. If you are measuring something, but don’t do anything with the results, you ARE losing money.

Let’s stop the unproductive cycle by plotting a course that leads to profits and improved efficiencies.

So how do you measure ROMI?

That all depends on your marketing goals.

There are various ways to measure your marketing efforts. But the trick is identify the measures that make the most sense for your business goals.

Step 1: Identify your business goals.

The most logical place to start is with identifying your business goals. There is no one particular goal that fits all situations. Really think through what you want the marketing tactic to achieve. It must be measurable too.

Use the acronym S.M.A.R.T. to help you think in terms of measurability of your goal.

S – is it specific?

M – is it measurable?

R – is it relevant?

T – is it time-dimensioned?

If you don’t have business goals clearly identified, how will you ever know when you reach them?

Step 2: Identify your target audience.

Knowing your target audience is a crucial step. Therefore, your marketing tactics must be geared towards your target audience. If not, you’re wasting marketing funds on unproductive efforts.

Understand who your target audience, where they hang out on the internet, and how they prefer to connect. You need to know what they like and don’t like and what problems keep them awake at night.

Furthermore, put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Think like they do to really understand them. See how they try solving a problem. Search for how they achieve a goal. Look at how they satisfy their need.

Step 3: Assess you business’ capability.

Next, list out all the marketing tactics you are currently using. This helps you understand what your current capabilities are so you don’t overextend your resources. For example, just because there are hundreds of places to connect online, this doesn’t mean your business must have a presence on all those places.

Look at where you are present and compare that with what you considered about your target audience.

Step 4: Assess your tactics against your target audience’s preferred method of contact

Have you ever considered the way you approach a client could cause them to leave or stay with you for life?

Therefore, are there tactics you are not using your target audience would prefer you use? And, are there tactics you are currently using your target audience doesn’t care about?

Step 5: Map your marketing efforts to your target audience

Identify the ways your target audience prefers to be contacted or engaged.

Then, map out your marketing efforts through those preffered channels. For example, if you learn your audience hangs out on Facebook, then you should definitely have a Facebook presence.  If your audience never goes to Facebook, then what value would having a Facebook presence bring?

Think strategically. Only setup and maintain social media platforms that are where your audience is.

Step 6: Identify your Marketing measurements

Next, move to the critical step of identifying what to measure. Your business goals with determine the measurement.

For example, one goal might be increase your subscriber count. Therefore, one measurement might be the number of new subscribers.  Remember, you can have multiple goals per marketing tactic.

Revisit each goal you identified earlier and identify an accurate measurement for it.

Then, you will take a baseline measurement before making any changes in marketing tactics. This will tell you where you are starting from. This is an important step. If you fail to measure this first, you won’t know how successful your tactic really is.

After you implement a marketing tactic adjustment, take another measurement. Be sure to allow enough time to pass before measuring again. This will allow you to gather enough data to assess.

Compare this measurement to the baseline measurement. Determine if any progress was made.

Look at the results. Did the marketing tactic change the results in a positive way? If not, reassess.

Step 7: Reassess over time.

In conclusion, the process outlined in this short article is not a “one and done” approach, but rather an on-going process. As customers change, your marketing tactics may need to change too. Many factors make it necessary for your marketing plans to be flexible.

Therefore, set up a process that allows you to measure regularly and assess often.  You want to be nimble and able to change/improve your marketing tactics to coincide with the changing trends of your audience.

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