Why It's Important To Understand Marketing Metrics?

MARKETING IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO


As a marketer you must have an appreciation of your market. The most objective way to do this is to employ a marketing tool referred collectively as “marketing metrics”. The term, “marketing metrics” is used to describe the variety of statistics you can glean from your business operations or marketing strategies and tactics implemented in marketing campaigns.

For a retailer operating from a store front, it’s include basic statistics such as # visitors, # buyers, # non-buyer, # items purchased, $ volume, length of time in store for both buyers and non-buyers. All this information is collected in a data base and analyzed to provide guidance to serious marketers as to the effectiveness of the operation and marketing.

It should be obvious that developing metrics is extremely important to any business. The funny thing is that most businesses ignore this function. They don’t realize one thing.

“What Cannot Be Measured, Cannot Be Changed”

Unfortunately, even the Trinidad and Tobago government which could be considered the largest business in this country sets the trend for how most businesses in Trinidad operate. Very little relevant marketing data is collected or required by the government.

In all fairness, the Central Statistical Office in Port of Spain is a resource that marketers must turn to when planning an extensive marketing campaign. However, most of the data reflect the market position two or maybe three years ago and although it provides a picture in time it’s not very useful in assessing the present conditions of the market.

In addition, because of the secretive nature of most Trinidad businesses, it is impossible to harvest industry data from individual companies. As such, data collection is one of the weakest points of marketing in Trinidad and Tobago.
Let’s just add here that the Internet the ideal marketing medium to develop metrics. If you have a website you can easily gather metrics to determine its impact on your market.

You can gauge interest, measure conversions, length of visits or even the second an email was opened. The Internet is such a dynamic marketing medium that no other medium comes close to the details that can be gathered. But most businesses in Trinidad do not use the internet for marketing. Many operate with a single minded purpose and a philosophy that…

When Things Good, Is Only One Thing We Need To Know

In Trinidad data collection is only done on metrics that are important to the business owner. Most are only concerned with the daily, weekly and monthly volume of sales. To them, nothing else matters.

Very few keep any record of their customers not even their contact information. That works fine in an economy where demand is much greater than supply but things are changing as many automobile dealers are beginning to realize. As one CEO of a large company doing millions of dollars a year put it “we are operating by the grace of God”.

He spends over $50,000 in advertising.


Is Advertising Marketing?

Professional marketing in T&T really boils down to how impressive a company can look in the newspaper, radio and television. Many smaller businesses lean towards more inexpensive advertising like flyers and brochures. Granted, these are some tools used by marketers and can use to generate business but it hardly can be considered marketing. So…

What Is Marketing?

To understand what marketing entails consider that marketing should ideally begin at the conceptualization of a product or service. It is having an understanding of who will buy the product or service, what are their needs and how much they will be willing to spend.

It is appreciating the target market and the channels of distribution. Only then should product or service should be produced or sold. Advertising comew much later.  As resellers the product or service comes first then the marketing. Not being marketers businesses seek out ad agencies to promote their products but...

Are Ad Agencies Marketers?

In speaking with the owner of a large advertising agency in Port of Spain I asked him if they kept any data on the effectiveness of the ads they produced. His response was, “why should we, it’s the business that is spending the money, it’s their responsibility”.

It’s sad but he was right. It is the business responsibility if they afford to invest in hiring an agency the onus is on them to collect the information. But most don’t realize this. Apparently the agency owner also did not realize the immense marketing power of monitoring and testing the effectiveness of their advertising.

Thats all for today. 

The Power of Concentration

As Always Be Well