Processes lend themselves to measurement. If you treat your marketing as a process, then you should be able to measure your marketing. The define stage answers the question: What is important? The measure stage will answer that question by asking: How are we doing?

I stated in a previous post that the purpose of the Measure stage was to quantify process performance and deliverable was to determine baseline process performance. Without these facts, you will be very ineffective in improving performance. This is the stage which is most difficult for the novice. Adequate measurements in the current state are simply not there many times and as a result we either never get out of this stage be trying to be too precise or we move on without inadequate information that causes us reduce effectiveness of the latter stages. Another common fault is that we start analyzing the data which is the next stage of the process.

Remember that this is a current state not a future state step in the process. Remember, if you think something that you are doing is not measurable, there is someone already measuring it, YOUR CUSTOMER. This brings us back to the marketing funnel and I am correlating the measure phase to the consider phase. In the consider phase, or the like stage of the funnel, prospects are aware of you but now you must prepare them to consider you as a worthy candidate. How do you do that? In the DMAIC methodology we use tools such as Critical to Quality and other tools to determine what is important to a prospect. Instead of thinking about this step from an internal point of view step back and consider what the prospect would use to measure your product or service and make the decision to move through the funnel. Developing measures with customer input will certainly help a prospect move though the funnel.

At this stage, do you know how a prospect is measuring you? What is the most Critical to quality standard that influences your product or service? What is more critical than others? The old saying is that people perform by how they are measured? If your company is based on how they are being measured do you have measurements in places that you are performing too?

This is an area that we taking the process map to a deeper level or developing the current state in a Value Stream Mapping process?

From the Developing and Measuring Training the Six Sigma Way: A Business Approach to Training and Development book, they state that customers’ expectations have three aspects: assume, expected and desired. The assumed customer requirements are the basics and typically are only communicated when the customer is dissatisfied. The expected customers have come to anticipate, certain features from their experience or by observing them in the marketplace. The desired customer requirements, however, are not objectively communicated to the supplier. They represent what desires the customer would really like to have met but does not expect. Some call these customer delights. Could you be scaling yourself in these three areas?

Developing marketing measurements requires a mind-set for accountability. Measurements must be understandable, quantifiable, and economic. Customers objectively and clearly state these requirements and pay the supplier for meeting their explicit expectations. We must be there listening and responding to them. The more these requirements are met, the more the customer is satisfied.

Do you have listening posts built into your processes? What targets are you meeting?

Related Posts:

The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology

The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC – Define stage

Why Do We Measure?

Related book: What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services

Technorati : Marketing Funnel, Marketing Process, Measure, Process Map, Six Sigma, Value Stream Mapping