A critical component of IMC plans is the key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the IMC campaign. They are qualitative and quantitative measures of success. An NPO that creates an IMC plan which outlines relevant metrics will allow them to monitor the progress of the campaign’s activities easier than one that doesn’t.
Many marketers have realized that they have a better chance of securing their desired marketing budgets if they can point to foreseeable tangible results. Additionally, KPIs and metrics put the purpose of the IMC plan into perspective. They can also add a layer of accountability to the marketers behind the IMC plan since they provide a direct benchmark for them to compare to. Otherwise, how can an organization measure the impact they are making?
Increasingly, the single most important evaluation measure in IMC plans is the return on the marketing investment (or marketing ROI). Measuring marketing ROI helps marketers understand if their use of resources is yielding the most effective results. Below is an example of a nonprofit organization that used marketing ROI to assess its IMC campaign.
An NPO is launching a clean water initiative to increase the number of people that can receive potable water in Colombia. The organization tracks the cost of setting up the campaign, which as an online and digital component (promotion costs, costs of the images and designs, and staff time) used to implement the campaign. These components become the NPO’s investments into the campaign, totaling $10,000.
Next, the organization tracks a range of metrics, including how many people view online promotions (page views), how many people click to donate (click-throughs), and ultimately the amount of money raise. Thanks to the campaign, the organization sees an additional $100,000 in donations for their clean water initiative.
The marketing ROI can be calculated by taking the donations generated ($100,000) and dividing it by the cost of the marketing budget invested ($10,000). In this case, the marketing ROI for NPO’s online campaign is 10%.
Metrics can also be utilized to measure other areas of an organization. Other areas to consider metrics for including social media, owned media, earned media, email marketing, paid media, and the online website. These are all other areas a non-profit organization might invest in marketing efforts. Some of these metrics found within these areas can also be utilized in other sections such as impressions, bounce rate, and click-thru rate. It is important to measure these accurately assess the effectiveness of an organization’s campaign.
By evaluating marketing efforts on a given campaign through KPIs and metrics, marketers can tweak their efforts and allocate resources better. Taking from the example above, the NPO would have had to outline the desired marketing ROI in their IMC plan from the beginning. They could have identified that a marketing ROI of 5% would be considered successful for their campaign. In this case, an evaluation would show that they exceeded their target for marketing ROI.
Utilizing metrics to measure all sections allows a non-profit to gauge their intended target audience better. For example, if one were to create a social media post about the importance of emphasizing on world hunger, they would benefit from knowing how many users it has reached or how often it was shared or commented on. In the case of email marketing, one would want to know how many emails are being opened vs ignored, etc. Ensuring evaluation of metrics within all of these different areas, helps a non-profit organization understand what they are performing well in and what they need to improve upon within their campaign. Using the right metrics to measure these sections is important because it allows the organization to accurately assess the effectiveness of the organization’s campaign and the level of influence the organization has achieved over its intended target audience.
The following metrics are broader that can help measure the overall effectiveness of various campaigns:
Attribution
This page contains material taken from:
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An Open Guide to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Copyright © 2023 by Andrea Niosi and KPU Marketing 4201 Class of Summer 2020 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
