Market Performance Tracking

How do you know if your marketing objectives are being achieved?

There are a few ways:

Revenue – definitely, if you are a commercial enterprise then a primary measure is the amount of money being paid to you for the product or service you offer.

Market share – yes, if you have access to this data, and can afford it, market share is gives you a sense of how competitive you are.

Brand Health or Marketing Effectiveness – these measures give you a richer sense how you are performing now and how you may perform in the future.

Let's use a car race analogy:

Revenue is like speedometer it gives you a one-dimensional measure of how fast you are travelling.

Market share is your position in the race – at lap six you are currently coming third.

Marketing performance tracking has lot more measures:

• It has a fuel gauge – how much longer can compete before we will have to top up our fuel (brand equity)

• It has rev counter – I am travelling at the same speed at my competition but at twice the revs, I am inefficiency. This translates as, I am spending the same on advertising as my competition but getting half of the awareness.

• Oil pressure – dropping oil pressure signals imminent engine problems. This is equivalent to brand relevance, if this is dropping, a decline is sales performance is imminent.

 

What we are describing here is lag measures vs. lead measures.

 

• Lag measures tell you what has happened – revenue, market share

• Lead measures give you an indication of what might happen, that have a predictive dimension.

If you institute a program of tracking market performance, twice a year is usually ok for most organisations, you can be aware of a problem in the engine that might compromise your position in the race, or worse, cause you to withdraw.

Get in touch if you’d like to talk more about the role of Market Performance Tracking.