Polls Versus the Ballot Box: What It Can Mean to Your Marketing
Wednesday, 11 January 2012 13:30
As the election season heats up for the presidential election showdown in November, the public is inundated with results from polls describing the acceptance or the relevance of this policy or that candidate. Keep in mind though, whatever your level of political interest, a poll is only significant based on what it measures.
A poll only reports the results of the opinions of a relatively small groups of people, and can be influenced by how the questions are prepared and how receptive the respondents are to the inquiry. (Next time a pollster calls during your dinner hour, you’ll know what a challenge this may present!) Yet, for all the emphasis on polls, the only result that matters is in the voting booth.
In your business, you face the same challenges, where customers tell you one thing, and then do completely the opposite. That’s where measurement comes into play. With any campaign, you not only have to monitor the outcome, you have to measure the right thing. There’s a classic marketing story of a boom-box maker who brought in a focus group to test-market colors on boom boxes. In the focus group, the consumers said they preferred black boom boxes; at the conclusion of the test, the consumers allowed to pick from a selection of boom boxes on the way out of the conference room. The overwhelming color choice? Yellow!
Fortunately, web analytics have made it much easier to track user behavior, and you can test-message broadcast emails to measure effectiveness. But what about direct mail? As with all marketing, it’s important to have a goal and a strategy. Are you going to measure success by cost per acquisition? Cost per piece? The response rate? Pick a metric based on your goal, and stick to that. And don’t forget to put into place processes that will help you achieve your goal. For example, if the goal is to acquire leads by having an offer tied to a phone number or email, make sure your call center or sales team is briefed in the proper response.
Entrepreneurs and small-business owners are optimists, and optimism can sometimes amplify expectations. But by keeping expectations within the scope of what direct mail and marketing campaigns can achieve, you’ll be much more pleased with the results.
