Here’s a thought – Change is the spice of reading. Puzzled? Let your eyes follow these words, to help make the picture clearer. Visualise the following scenarios and take a guess at the one similarity that connects them all.
Scenario 1
A young boy, aged 10, asks his uncle to stand with his back against a wall. He then proceeds to take a pencil, climbs a makeshift ladder made up of two stools and marks his uncle’s height on the wall. Asking, his uncle to move away, he marks his own height on the wall.
Scenario 2
An aspiring fashion designer observes her local darzee (tailor) as he measures a cloth twice before he goes ahead and begins with the cutting. She watches on, as his hands become the ruler and his sewing machine the weapon of his choice as he stitches the fabric.
Scenario 3
A YouTube influencer has decided to celebrate International World Dance Day with her YouTube family (read followers). Being a novice dancer herself, she begins to go through the comments to understand the kind of music her fans would like in order to set a routine to entertain them.
Scenario 4
Living the bachelor life, a young Investment Banker decides to replicate his father’s famous Chicken Dum Biryani. Toiling in his modest kitchen for half the day, he prepares the savoury item and plates it on a serving dish. The first bite tells him that there’s something missing in terms of the ingredients. He calls up his father to asses the same.
Four different scenarios, four completely different individuals. What could be the commonality? Surely you must have guessed it by now. Yes! They’re all trying to understand and quantify certain things that would help them to achieve certain goals.
The little boy wanted to ensure his height matches that of his uncle’s. The fashion designer wanted to replicate the same stitching patterns as her tailor; the YouTuber wanted to create the perfect dance routine. And, lastly, the Investment Banker wanted to cook up the perfect Biryani, a replica of his father’s recipe.
As interesting as this exercise was, what came out of it? Let’s elaborate on that idea by taking the route of marketing jargons.
Each individual wished to set down certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which would allow them to measure their performance, asses their growth, recalibrate their efforts while striving towards their SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) goals.
Metrics are better known by their compact abbreviation – KPIs, happen to be one of the favourite words of a Marketer. Many reasons can be cited for this, but the most relevant of them would be the fact that these KPIs help Marketers in successfully walking the tightrope of organisational goals.
So, in line with the above, metrics play an important role for any company, regardless of their industry, size or the experience. This fact alone makes it important to ensure that seasoned marketers have a set of guidelines to go about this process to incur customer delight and drive business goals.
Without further ado, here are a few rules pertaining to metrics that all marketers must follow
During the collating stage, look out for the most relevant metrics that will enable you to create a stronger, more relevant User Persona.
Understand the difference between Vanity Metrics (eg: Page View) and Actionable Metrics (eg: Conversion) and incorporate them in the most rewarding manner.
Segregate metrics into those that can be easily replicated on a monthly basis and those which cannot. This helps maintain consistency.
Don’t start to track everything that can be tracked. Give more importance to SMART insights rather than fancy analytics.
Instead of going Micro, go Macro when it comes to KPIs. One way to do it is by connecting your campaigns to your organizational goals or value proposition and measuring them accordingly.
Your metrics cannot be apples if your strategy is oranges. Aligning the two in the most relevant, insightful and resource-oriented manner is imperative to achieve goals.
Lastly, be clear when you communicate about the set metrics in order to ensure consistency with the end goal of improvement in place.
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” ― H. James Harrington