Part 3: Building Measurement Models

Be specific in identifying each consumer touch point, from consideration, to purchase, to referral/recommendation. Keep in mind the steps may vary by target shopper profile and retail destination.

Find the essential action at each step designed to move the customer along the Path to Purchase. The marketing will be responsible for reinforcing or creating a new habit. You will establish metrics and measure its effectiveness. In some cases, especially for digital media, measurement tools are easy to come by. For other steps, data will be more qualitative but can still be useful. Consider your best options for gauging success at each touch point.

The more you can pool and draw relationships between the data collected at each touch point, the better your opportunity to get a clear picture of the shopper's behavior. For example, the ability to tie response data from emailings to loyalty card transactions will help you "connect the dots" in the Path to Purchase picture.

Drawing a flowchart may be helpful in visualizing the different metrics you're using at individual check points and the data links you've established. Your long-term goal should be to connect, through cause and effect, all your individual metrics to your core metric of sales and share.

Since your measurement framework may be too complex to share easily with your organization, create a simplified score (e.g. "on a scale of 1 to 5") for each key touch point and a total for each campaign. You should then be able to communicate the progress of your campaigns throughout the year in a language everyone can easily understand.