Move the needle

If you are marketing a product or service I hope you are measuring the results.  If not, you are missing the boat (more clichés for Cybelle) and you will never know if what you are doing is making a difference in your business. The goal of marketing should be to move the sales needle (or build up a database marketing effort for long term sales) if you can't quantify the results of your efforts then put the money in the bank and earn the interest.   If you don't measure you won't be able to test one idea against another or take calculated risks to try new ideas.  At the end of the day you need to be able to say that your efforts generated 'X' times more money then it cost to produce.  Hunches will only last so long.  So if you are guessing at your results, now is the time to figure out a way to quantify and measure your efforts.

Measuring also allows you to constantly improve.  Just the other day I was describing an effort we ran that produced a 15% lift in our results and another test that produced a 7% increase in conversions.  Did those marketing programs work?  Are we constantly looking to improve and refine our campaigns?  Of course, but without calculating the effect of our marketing I could have guessed they worked but I wouldn't be able to tell you by how much or the ROI for the effort.

At the end of the day you need to be able to say you helped move the needle whatever that needle might be.

• Do your marketing efforts move the sales needle? 
• Not sure what you should calculate? Leave a comment and I will try to help you out.
• Let me know if you currently quantify and evaluate your results (don't worry if you are not, you are here to learn how and what to measure).

Now where is that calculator I was using...