The Perfect Measurement Program

In Chapter 3 of Measure What Matters by Katie Paine she talks about the seven steps to the perfect measurement program. These seven steps give an outline of how you want to measure for your company and also discusses the importance of measurement and why your company will need to utilize it.

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives
-When looking at what you want to measure it's important to know what you want your outcome to be. It's also important set a deadline, so you are able to give yourself a timeline. Marketing goals fall into three main categories, which are sales, marketing or positioning and public safety or education. When looking at sales you need to know how to sell more products, increase market share, increase share of wallet or increase online purchase. When taking a look at marketing and positioning, knowing a goal and a specific aspect of the organization perception or reputation which needs to be changed or a relationship that needs to be altered. Lastly we'll take a look at public safety and education. These programs are used to distribute information about impending disasters or disaster assistance.

Step 2: Define your environment, your audiences, and your role in influencing them
-Taking a look at this next step, it's important to examine each individual audience and know what is important to that specific audience.When looking at this step, it's important to answer these two questions, how does a good relationship benefit the organization and how might a bad relationship threaten it. When answering these questions, the answers should relate to your corporate goals. Knowing your environment and audience will be important to you because you want to be measuring information, which is important to your company.

Step 3: Define your investment
-With this step, it's exactly as it sounds, you want to how much it will cost. You are also going to want to determine how much you are willing to spend. As Katie Paine states throughout her book that you want to spend about 5 to 7 percent of your budget on measuring your programs.

Step 4: Determine your benchmarks
-When looking at your benchmarks it's important to compare your results to other companies similar to you. When comparing you will determine where your companies has both successes and downfalls. Besides comparing to other companies, you'll also want to compare your data to your company's past performances.

Step 5: Define your key performance indicators
Key performance indicators or KPI's are the specific criteria you consider success for your company. Each objective many require a different type of measurement which also means you'll need different KPI's. This step also talks about the difference between awareness and visibility. Awareness is a person's knowledge of the brand or message, which can only be measured by survey. Visibility is the volume of coverage, or in other words, where the store first appeared.

Step 6: Select the right measurement tool and vendors and collect data
-You will want to select the right measurement tools for your company as this is what you'll be using to collect your data. You are able to collect data in three ways, content analysis of social or traditional media, primary research and web analytics. Not only do you want to make sure that the data that's being collected is correct, but you also want to make sure that it's affordable and will provide the data when you need it.

Step 7: Turn data into action
-By looking at your data, you'll be able to see where your company has made improvements and has taken steps back. Lastly you'll want to set up a regular reporting schedule, so all members within your company know where you company stands and where your trying to go.

Knowing these steps, will help you company thrive in setting and meeting goals. When looking your company's data you will have an idea of where your company needs to go and what audience you should be focusing on. Knowing these seven steps, will help you set better measurement goals for your company and allow you to compare yourself not only to other companies, but also to your company's past performances.