Once seen as the budget you couldn’t count or measure and the return on investment that you wouldn’t realize, things have changed, and marketing and PR can, and must, now be accurately monitored and reported on. Without the requisite understanding of what type of marketing reaches which customers best and what this translates to in revenue gained is one of the modern business must-haves.
Monitoring must be embedded in marketing and PR efforts from the get-go
The processes of feedback from customers and clients must be built into your marketing software and the actual campaign from the beginning. Adding a feedback loop after the fact or once marketing material has already been sent out to customers and clients or purchases completed is shortsighted and results in a higher rate of non-completion. Asking your customers for feedback at the point of purchase or as part of another personalized marketing message is the best way to gather the data that you need. Your social media needs to be established with the aim to gather and process customer information on likes and dislikes. Many businesses have now resorted to establishing entire internal data mining and collecting units as a basis for future marketing and growth.
Clean your company data
Cleaning your data is one of the first things that you will need to do. If big data is going to prove any use, it needs to be clean. You can have all the data in the world, but unless you are able to make sense of it, structure it and then use it to contact and communicate with clients and customers, who actually want to be contacted, then the data will be no use. Determining how to perform email data cleaning and that the customer contact details that you have are current is going to form the basis of any SMS and telemarketing campaigns. Both of which are trending across the world.
Ongoing monitoring allows for flexibility
You can change horse in mid-stream as long as you are well-prepared and have another horse at hand. By having a clear understanding of what’s working and what’s not, you will be able to effect immediate changes to your PR and marketing strategy.
The reporting element
This relates to the fact that many of these services are now externally managed, and as such, it is incumbent on your business to ensure that whoever is managing your PR or marketing is able to provide you and your stakeholders with a clear report on costs and click-throughs.
The data exists to now run personalized marketing and PR campaigns on the largest scale ever. The technological means and the know-how is also now widely available to be able to monitor, record and report on the effectiveness of all online and new media marketing. Furthermore, social media discussions and products and company online forums are great places for traditional marketing to be unpicked and analyzed with the clients and customers, determining how they are affected by this aspect of your marketing. Marketing is thus now a lot more scientific and holistic. If your business doesn’t have such aspects as the basis for monitoring effectiveness and the spend, then you really need to re-evaluate how you reach your customers and why.
