The-PDMA: Strategic Marketing Tracking 

Strategic Marketing Tracking
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By: Jerry W. Thomas on 25 October, 2008 03:21:00
 
Some will say it was the golden age of marketing, this past now vanishing
beneath the quicksand of change. The simple world of three television networks
and stable retail distribution channels has vanished. The simple world of
supermarkets and Nelson is gone forever. So what’s a marketing executive to
do? How can she keep track of the effects of marketing actions in the midst of
upheaval, revolution, and transformation?
In contrast to media and technology, the marketing fundamentals (strategy,
positioning, awareness, continuity, product quality, concentration, message
communication, image projection, etc.) remain as constant and as important as
ever. The fundamentals do not change just because the “information
superhighway,” or interactive media, or multiplicity of television channels
are created. The marketing fundamentals must remain as the lodestars in the
marketing universe, to guide marketers through the cosmic confusion of changing
media, changing technology, and changing competitive forces.
We have found that strategic tracking of consumer awareness, perceptions, and
behavior delivers essential marketing intelligence to help guide marketers
through the turbulence and helter-skelter of rapid changes in marketing
technology, media, and distribution channels. The ultimate goal of marketing is
to influence and control the ultimate consumer. Therefore, if the perceptions,
attitudes and behavior of that ultimate consumer are monitored over time, we
will know if the cumulative force of all marketing activities is influencing the
ultimate consumer. If we track consistently, it is possible to monitor the
effects of specific marketing programs as they are introduced.
Strategic tracking answers a number of important questions:
*How is your brand’s awareness trending over time, relative to competition?
Awareness is the single most important marketing variable in many product
categories.
*How is your brand’s image evolving over time? Think of “image” as the
character or personality of a brand’s awareness. The strategic management of
brand image is one of the most important goals of marketing.
*What advertising messages do your consumers remember about your brand, and how
do these messages change over time? Advertising messages tend to undergo
learning and memory “distortion” as they are interpreted and remembered by
consumers. Therefore, the only way to know for sure the “net, net”
communication of your advertising is to track advertising message recall.
*What variables define your optimum target market? Who are your brand’s heavy
users, nonusers, light users? The identification and monitoring of your
brand’s optimum target market is one of the easily calculated outputs of good
tracking research. What are the demographics (and the correlates) that define
the optimal target market for your brand? Which market segments should you focus
upon?
*What impact are your competitors having in the marketplace, and how are
competitive activities influencing your brand? Overreaction and underreaction to
competitive initiatives constitute some of the greatest marketing mistakes
historically. It’s really important to know, as early as possible, whether a
new competitive product or new competitive advertising campaign is a real
threat, or just smoke and vapors. Good tracking research allows you to monitor
and assess competitive threats—before it’s too late to react.
If you should decide to pursue strategic tracking research for your brand, here
are some suggestions to keep in mind. Tracking research, like everything else,
can be good or bad depending upon how you design and execute it.
*Telephone surveys are typically the best way to track awareness, image, and
advertising message recall. These telephone surveys can be continuous (i.e.,
conducted every day) or pulsed (conducted at a point in time, such as the last
week of each quarter). Some types of tracking research can be conducted by mail
(e.g., recognition tracking, image tracking, or brand share tracking), and the
quality of the data from mail surveys can be high. Mail surveys, however, are
not very good at measuring awareness (because respondents can ask other
household members or look up the answers).
*Good sampling is essential. The greatest (and often least visible) mistakes in
tracking research are usually sampling errors. The sampling plan and management
of the sample are absolutely crucial to consistently accurate tracking data. The
samples from month to month and year to year must be identical in every way or
else the resulting data will not be comparable. Here are some common sampling
errors to avoid:
*Sample definition too narrow. If your target audience is females aged 21 to 29,
that’s fine for guiding media placement. All too often, however, the target
audience becomes the specification for the sampling plan for tracking.
Therefore, only females 21 to 29 are interviewed in the tracking research.
Suppose your advertising turns out to be really effective among women 34 to 54
instead of women 21 to 29. You might have canceled a very effective campaign
because it appeared to be failing among the target audience. Also, it’s
possible your advertising is working among 21- to 29-year-olds, but driving all
other age groups away. If we were only sampling the 21 to 29 segment, we would
have overlooked this critical failing.
Remember, always define the sample for tracking research very broadly and
inclusively. The purpose of tracking is to tell us what’s happening in the
marketplace, and a too-narrow sample almost always defeats this objective.
*Variable definition of sample. Never allow the things you want to measure to be
a part of the screening criteria that admits someone into the survey. For
example, you would never want awareness of a product category or awareness of a
brand to be part of the screening criteria for a tracking survey if one of the
purposes of the tracking research is to measure awareness. Likewise, you would
never want “past 30 day usage” of a category or brand to be a part of the
sampling criteria, if the purpose of the study is to measure changes in usage
over time. Awareness and product usage are variables that can change as a result
of your marketing activities or competitive initiatives, and that can change
from season to season. As these variables change, they can change the
composition of the tracking sample and destroy the comparability of the survey
data across time.
*Sampling without replacement. If the universe is limited (say you are tracking
attitudes among your 1000 dealers), and you take dealers out of the sample as
they are interviewed, then the composition of your sample is gradually changing
as interviewing progresses—and this makes the interviews from one time period
incomparable to interviews in another time period.
Remember, if the universe is small and limited, then sample with replacement.
That is, once a respondent is interviewed, put that respondent back into the
sample for the next wave of interviewing. An alternative solution is to divide
the original sample into discrete, matched subsamples, and then use one of these
subsamples for each subsequent wave of interviewing.
*Randomize sample within quota groups. Even though most projects begin with a
random sample, things can happen which destroy randomness. For example, most
samples are organized by time zone (so that households across the United States
are called at the appropriate time). Sometimes, as part of this processing to
organize the sample, the sample is put into some type of order (area code,
prefix, or alphabet). As a final quality-control procedure, always randomize the
final sample within each quota group. Then, no matter how the sample is worked,
you will end up with a random sample.
*Limit sample to force callbacks. The research company must limit the size of
the original sample, so that the callback cycle is properly triggered. If too
many telephone numbers are put in the initial sample, then it is likely that no
callbacks will ever be made. The study is completed before the interviewers ever
work through the original sample. The recommended policy is to release 70% of
the planned sample, and then gradually introduce the remaining 30% of the sample
as the callback cycle is completed on the initial sample. Typically, a primary
number in the sample should receive a total of three calls (an original call and
two callbacks).
*The questionnaire must remain the same from month to month and year to year.
Changes in the questionnaire (even something as seemingly innocent as a change
in question order) can create unexpected changes in the results. Simply changing
one word in a question can change the results. Therefore, keep the questionnaire
constant over time. If you want to modify, add, or delete questions in a
tracking study, do it toward the end of the questionnaire—so that the changes
will not distort the key measures in the first 80% of the questionnaire.
*All interviewing procedures and controls must remain constant over time.
Changes in the minutia of training, scheduling, monitoring, and supervising
interviewers can inject unplanned changes in tracking study results. The
briefing and training instructions for each specific tracking study must remain
unchanged over time.
*Editing, coding, data cleaning, and tabulation must remain constant over time.
Changes in the way “no answers” or “blanks” are handled, changes in how
many multiple responses are accepted, and a hundred other “minor” tabulation
details can change tracking results over time.
A great long-term threat to the accuracy and integrity of a strategic tracking
study is gradualism. That is, small incremental changes in methods and
procedures accumulate over time and gradually destroy the comparability of the
tracking data. For ongoing tracking studies, it is recommended that monthly
meetings be held with everyone in operations working on the project, to review
and reinforce exactly how the study is to be executed. Likewise, specific
quality-control guidelines and standards must be developed and maintained for
each long-term tracking project.
Needless to say, once you choose a research company to do a tracking project,
you should stick with that one company (unless that company’s performance is
unsatisfactory). Changing research companies every year or two on a long-term
project almost always guarantees that the data will not be comparable.
The true strategic value of tracking research is fully realized only after
several years of consistent measurement of your ultimate consumers. Several
years of longitudinal data really tell a story, but it’s a strategic story, a
grand panorama of your performance in the marketplace compared to your
competitors, as played out during the different phases of the business cycle.
With this strategic road map, it is possible to plot grand strategy, and monitor
your successes and failures in pursuing that strategy, regardless of the
day-to-day confusion and chaos in the quicksand world of upheaval, revolution,
and transformation.
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