Data is everywhere in today’s digital world. While this is largely a positive thing it can also lead to issues. If you are not measuring the right data you can make costly mistakes in terms of Digital Execution. In our experience it is vital that companies agree a measurement strategy up front when setting their digital strategy.  However it is rare to find a client that has a measurement plan in place.

The aim of this post is to help you put together a measurement plan for your business.

Step 1 – Identify who Needs to be Involved

This is an important step as you need to ensure you have the right people from across the company involved. This can include some or all of the following:

• A representative of the management team who understands the core business objectives and strategy
• A technical resource who understands analytics
• A member of the marketing team
• An external Agency / Consultant

Step 2 – Identify your Business Objectives

It is vitally important to get buy in from the Management Team in this step. Your company will benefit from a more effective measurement plan by taking the time to ensure everyone is aware of the primary business objectives for the year ahead. Increasing the number of Facebook likes your business gets is probably not your number 1 business objective. It is more realistic that your business will be looking to do one of more of the below.

• Increase Sales
• Improve Customer Retention
• Penetrate New Markets
• Launch New Products
• Improve Customer Satisfaction

Step 3 – Set Goals for Each Business Objective

Lets say you have an online retail business and your 3 primary objectives are to grow top line revenue, grow exports in the US market and improve Brand Recognition in the UK market. We can use this information to set some key goals that are easy to measure.  Some examples of these might be

• Grow Overall Revenue by 10%
• Grow US Revenue by 15%
• Measure Brand Lift in UK Market

Step 4 – Identify the relevant KPI’s

Using the simple example from step 2 we should break revenue down into different KPI’s. For example in order to grow Overall Revenue by 10% we will need to look at the KPI’s that will help determine revenue. Some examples of these would be

• Grow Website Traffic
• Improve Site Conversion Rate
• Increase Average Order Value

For Brand Awareness we might measure:

• Brand Lift
• Search Impressions on Brand Keyphrases
• % New Visitors

Step 5 – Create an Implementation Plan

Once we have decided what we need to measure we then ensure that our Analytics package is set up to accurately measure our KPI’s. The may involve work from the tech team and/or an external agency to ensure the correct goals, events or revenue tracking is in place.

Once the measurement tools are in place we can begin to monitor performance and accurately assess the impact of our Digital Strategy on the Business Goals

Get in touch to find out more on how a measurement plan can help you achieve your business goals online.