The brand-development, marketing, and communications businesses struggle with measurement. After all, most of our evaluative tools are tactical; they report "means" in the form of one-off social media or advertising metrics. They too often don't measure strategic outcomes, however, which are the results or the "ends" of how people behave and what they actually choose to do.
It can be useful to generate and track Instagram "likes," YouTube views, and web-page visits, for sure, but to what end? How do we know what people actually do - if anything - after engaging with that content? Do we know whether and how that engagement shifts their opinions or their behaviors? What's the end game? Some organizations seem better equipped to answer these questions than others.
The right kind of market research can help. Yes, we always want to measure Awareness and Attitudes, but that's just the beginning. There's a third "A" word, which helps move Awareness and Attitudes into behavior. It's called Action. The best market research tests and measures individuals' intentions and abilities to act ... to do something. If we want our brands, our marketing, and our communications to drive behavior and effect change, we need to be incorporating a propensity for Action into our planning and research.
It can be useful to generate and track Instagram "likes," YouTube views, and web-page visits, for sure, but to what end? How do we know what people actually do - if anything - after engaging with that content? Do we know whether and how that engagement shifts their opinions or their behaviors? What's the end game? Some organizations seem better equipped to answer these questions than others.
The right kind of market research can help. Yes, we always want to measure Awareness and Attitudes, but that's just the beginning. There's a third "A" word, which helps move Awareness and Attitudes into behavior. It's called Action. The best market research tests and measures individuals' intentions and abilities to act ... to do something. If we want our brands, our marketing, and our communications to drive behavior and effect change, we need to be incorporating a propensity for Action into our planning and research.
Image courtesy of Bill Marsh, Jr.