Any successful entrepreneur has a dashboard which shows measures of guerrilla marketing success at any moment throughout the week. The terminology changes depending on the type of business and culture. Metrics, KPI (Key Performance Indicators) or MOSvT (Measures Of Success vs. Target).
Guerrilla marketing metrics to measure include:
#1: Response Rates
#2: Conversion Rates
#3: Growth Rate
#4: Marketing Campaign History
#5 Customer Acquisition Costs
#6: Retention Rates
#7: Customers Saved
#8: Cross-Sells
#9 The Control Group
#10 Positive Comments (Public or private)
#11 Referrals or Recommendations
These are added to the sales, customers, profit measurements. Do you believe the only measureme of success is limited to return on investment (ROI)? Are you struggling to find measurements that are meaningful to your organization?
Here are 11 useful measures of success that you may not be measuring, but should be.
#1: Response Rates
Often times the only rate of response measured is based on traditional marketing. Mail 20,000 post cards, distribute in newspaper or based on listenerships. The same can be true about lunch invitations, meetings or phone calls. Hopefully the rates of response are increased as personalization has higher impact. If www.timetrade.com is used for invitations to phone calls, meetings, lunch or demos, accepting is as easy as tracking. Using a tools such as www.grasshopper.com is a method to not only get the call but measure the number of responses.
#2: Conversion Rates
Everyone wants to measure the volume of leads generated to get to the bottom-line ROI of their marketing efforts. One key performance indicator along the way is the conversion rate. Monitoring conversion rates at every point will be a guide to know where to increase or decrease investment of time and money.
You’ll need a mechanism to know when potential customers responds with action and introduces themselves. For online marketing, most people use the combination of a URL shortener and some form of a “cookie” to attach a campaign to a lead. Hootsuite has integrated Google Analytics into their URL shortener for a seamless transition to success metrics in analytics. Proprietary shorteners are a common method to measuring clickthroughs. For offline activities (dirt world), www.grasshopper.com again is a great tool. For visits to a retail store, loyalty cards are used but the over abundance in the marketplace has the consumer very selective. The simplest form can be a punch card and in the '60's, there were stamp programs which now can be duplicated easily with stickers.
For online business success, one of the most important steps in understanding where your lead / customer or conversion came from is to know when someone clicks on a link and then converts. The most reliable way to do this is to place a “cookie” on the user’s machine with the campaign name for the channel that generated the click. Then use your campaign reporting to track the number of leads and conversions you’ve generated. Fortunately Hubspot has tools built in do exactly that.
The number will likely be fairly low in the beginning but by looking at conversions divided by leads, you can get your conversion rate for leads.
#3: Growth Rate
Measure the growth rate over time, watching the trends and patterns vs. isolated moments. Having the ability to understand how volume is growing at a healthy rate gives proof that the investment of time and money are making an impact. The reality is that it takes time to build a sustainable business and setting realistic expectations is important.
Tracking the results might be as simple as a spreadsheet, a white board or you might use a visual data mangement tool such as TheBrain.
#4: Marketing Campaign History
Review how your company reports on the trail of the buyer as it relates to a sale. With the new software tools, we can now report on the originating campaign, the campaigns responded to in-between, and the converting campaign. Hubspot has campaign tracking integrated into its software.
Knowing the drivers to the sale and adjusting costs related to the sale improves ROI. Since guerrilla marketing includes both online and offlline activities, your CRM system needs to allow for tracking all marketing efforts through the entire sales cycle and your teams are appropriately trained to track it.
Zoho.com is a free online resource which integrates a variety of modules and includes spreadsheets, invoicing, and CRM software. For a larger company, SYSPRO gets it done. Almost every email management system available has campaign tracking tools.
#5 Customer Acquisition Costs
Guerrilla marketing principles are based on low and no cost marketing tactics where instead of money, innovation and time is is the foundation. Measure the full campaign history and then assign the cost per conversion to track and compare based on the various marketing campaigns.
#6: Retention Rates
Once a conversion happens and the potential buyer becomes a customer, what is the the ability to keep a customer? The theory is that those with personalized marketing and services are more engaged and likely retain better. Social media tools are a good addition to the guerrilla marketing arsenal to improve engagement and personalization.
To measure retention rates, keep track of all leads converted or customers and track them over time. For a business which is fee based, it is a simple task to measure how long a customer is retained. The business model which is based more on one-time transactions, having a recorded history of transactions over time is necessary.
#7: Customers Saved
Customer complaints are not the end of a relationship. A customer complaint can become a pivotal moment when a company lives up to the prmise of customer satisfaction. Marketing does not end with the transaction but continues on. Measure how many times someone on your team saves a customer from cancelling, switching or returning your product or service.
#8: Cross-Sells
Once the customer has made a purchase and are overwhelmed as a satisfied buyer, will they be willing to purchase again? Measuring additional purchases is a strong indication of customer satisfaction. How much revenue was generated from additional purchases and/or add-on products for customers? Marketing to past customers includes service, support and surverys with invitations along the way.
# 9: Control Group
Whether guerrilla marketing is effective can be better measured when compared against historical results with little or no marketing activities. A control group might be identified as one which has never been approached with a product or service in the past. How a control group is set up will be dependent on past marketing activities, budgets and how the new guerrilla marketing plan will be implemented. Without the control group to compare against, measuring results is based somewhat on guesstimation.
# 10: Positive Feedback
Whether it be private or public, real feedback from the recipients / buyers is a prime indicator of success. Immediate feedback can help a company avoid a calamity. At the end of the day, the dashboard with no feedback has the entrepreneur at a disadvantage. Voluntary feedback is best but where none exists, the questions or quick surveys, social media or follow up by phone becomes part of the daily routine even it is nothing more than: "Are you more than happy with the results?"
# 11: Referrals or Recommendations
Each week, the number for referrals or recommendations is a measure of success above all others. When buyers / clients risk their reputation and take a moment out fo their day to make a recommendation and referral, consider each one as priceless. A positive remmendation is not simply a few words, they are precious and when on the Internet, permanent.
LinkedIn, Facebook, Biznik all offer recommendation options. Positive comments and recommendations in forums, blog comments or Twitter are important to monitor and save. The dashboard showing mediocre sales and no referrals is an indication more is needed. Why are the previous customers willing to buy but stop at the transaction?
Analyzing results is not limited to these metrics but this overview highlights many commonly missed measurements
