Evaluating: personal sales & brands

PERSONAL SALES
Assess constantly against targets - SMART objectives
Other factors assessed:

• productivity - calls per day/account, number of orders v calls
• account development - no. new accounts, growth of sales from existing
• expenses - expenses v no. calls made

BRANDS
(De Chernatony '01) answer on 5 point scale to highlight S&W

1. brand vision
2. organisational structure
3. brand objectives
4. brand essence
5. implementation & brand resourcing

Evaluating: direct & interactive MC & sponsorship

DIRECT & INTERACTIVE MC

Measure:

1. response rate
2. conversion rate
3. order value
4. repeat orders

Gather through voucher/coupon responses that distinguish the source. Important to aslo establish the cost per enquiry and cost per order.

Measuring online - debate as to whether this can be done effectively as no insight to attitudes, motivation or tie with offline.
Number of hits, unique hits, repeat hits, sessions (how long?). Click-through rates (but only deal with behaviour, not attitude)

SPONSORSHIP

1. Media exposure
2. Assess communications results - pre & post-test awareness, corporate image perception & attitudes
3. Feedback from stakeholders - qualitative feedback from participants ascertaining mutual benefits

Evaluating: sales promotions & PR (MC, unit 8)

SALES PROMOTIONS

1. Consumer audits - through loyalty card schemes or consumer panel (any change in behaviour as a result)
2. Sales information - essential stats if aim is market penetration
3. Retail audits - track changes in stock levels, market share immediately after a campaign
4. Sales force feedback - qualitative based on uptake
5. Voucher/coupon redemption - coded to relate to campaign

PR
Haywood suggests 8:

1. Budget
   
2. Awareness - marketing research
   
3. Attitude - MR
   
4. Media coverage & tone - who covered, how many column inches. +/-. Qualitative.
   
5. Positioning - Marketing research into perceived positioning
   
6. Response generation - generate any code or referencing
   
7. Share price
   
8. Sales - PR not often designed for this purpose, so not objective performance measure
   

Evaluating: advertising (MC, unit 8)

ADVERTISING - Pre-testing (or copy testing) show unfinished ads to preselected representative groups of the target audience to see whether meets its objectives
Use focus groups
3 different groups of techniques: (De Pelsmacker et al 2001)

1. Internal - checklists & readability
2. Communications effects - physiological tests, recall and direct opinion measurement
3. Behavioural effects - measure actual response (not predictive) using trailer tests & split scan processes

Post-testing measure the number of inquiries, or direct responses, stimulated by advert or campaign (returned coupons, literature requests, orders)

• Recall tests - how memorable with target audience. Recognition tests check ability to reprocess information about an advertisement (most common for print adverts).
• Sales tests - increases in sales as result of comms. Not necessarily accurate performance measure. Tends to be through single-source data (controlled sets of ads). Expensive, only appropriate for testing individual ads (not campaigns) but highly dependable.

Other tests
Tracking studies - regular data from buyers e.g. TGI
Likeability tests: personally meaningful, relevance, stimulates interest

Evaluating communications effectiveness: (MC, unit 8)

Evaluation is about finding ways of measuring effectiveness

EVALUATING COORDINATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

To be effective in the long-term, need to evaluate the component parts of comms activities:

• Analysis - how thorough is out context analysis?
  
• Objectives - are they clearly thought through, based on detailed analysis, how do they relate back to marketing objectives and corporate objectives?
  
• Planning - logical framework needed to set out how activities will be coordinated (select appropriate strategic options, schedule, implement and evaluate)
  
• Budgets - how much do we need to (or can afford to) spend to meet our objectives?
  
• Media - review, search for more effective platforms as seek to differentiate
  
• Marketing mix - other elements of mix should also be coordinated and consistent
  
• Customer service - when marketing communications are used to encourage customers to make contact with the organisation, the appropriate mechanisms are in place to facilitate the process (e.g. adverts directing to jammed phone lines)
  
• Creativity - through whole process e.g. strategy selection, tactics, budgets
  

- Evaluation outcomes can feed next campaign and improve efficiency
- Comms should be measured on a scale with maximises the 4Cs. Perfect situation would be highly credible communications to the whole target audience at minimum cost with maximum control (if only!)
- Occasions where a campaign is from an unexpected opportunity, cost may be higher (production & media buying) but benefits outway (e.g. the sponsor of a football team that's in the final of a major cup competition). Need to be responsive to opportunities.

- Evaluation process happens before, during and after a campaign. Different parts if a campaign are tested beforehand e.g. advertising pre-testing.
- Evaluate the success of the overall impact of a coordinated marketing communications campaign, not purely success of individual components.

Evaluation:

1. Has it done what it set out to do?
2. Did it do everything that could have been done and was it efficient?

Media: relationship building & interactivity (MC, unit 7)

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

• Initial stimulus - often traditional media
• Response - passive (none at this stage but may be stored for reference) / active (receiver decides to take action)
• Interactivity - online media, call centres
• Ongoing contact & involvement

INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATIONS
B2B market bigger than B2C in terms of internet applications
Website at the core:

• opportunity to interact and form a dialogue
• e-commerce potential
• can collect database info

Benefits: considerably lower transaction costs, opportunities for growth & innovation, encourage cooperative behaviour, enhances customer communications, can increase corporate image, increases information about customers, enhances measurement of interaction, low barriers of entry to those debeloping

NEW MEDIA BENEFITS

• 1-2-1 & 1-2-many (v. traditional 1-2-many)
• increased dialogue
• personalised
• communities

INTERACTIVE STRATEGIES
- Can be used as: a shop window, enquiry facility, fully interactive form of engagement, fully integrated system (embed with partners)
- Has enabled some brands to reach new audiences e.g. Abbey/Cahoot
[get current ad spend figures and more examples]

Media: budgets, efficiency, buying (MC, unit 7)

MEDIA BUDGETS
Limited media presence can be supported by PR to generate additional media exposure via editorials.
Controversial approaches may stimulate media interest beyond paid-for communications.

EFFICIENCY & EVALUATION
- Duplication is to be encouraged but 'the duplication factor' needs to be taken into account by media planners when calculating net reach & frequencies
- Communications efforts don't happen in isolation, affected by competitor's media usage, how much noise created etc.

Cost per thousand (CPT)

• medium's ability to reach every 1000 customers
• calculation: CPT = (budget/no. in target audience) x 1000
• measures relative efficiency NOT effectiveness

Television rating points (TVRs)

• measure by which TV advertising time is bought
• units that represent the audience watching a particular programme
• 1 TVR = 1% audience
• most ads shown a number of times so TVRs would accumulate over time
• BARB (Broadcaster's Audience Research Board) hold figures

Gross rating points (GRPs) = reach x frequency
measure reach in other media forms
50% audience x 4 showings (or OTS, opportunities to see) = 200 GRPs

MEDIA BUYING & BRIEFING
- Media planning still often done by agency but buying is outsourced to specialists (their size means greater purchasing power)
- They'll need briefing on: campaign objectives, target audiences, associated marketing activity, relevant sales data, previous media history, competitive activity, budgets & timing