Clients want a measurable system for seeing the results of a campaign be it advertising or a branding effort we do for them. We don’t blame them. Clients and employers pay damn good money for work and services.

All us marketers or Anti-marketers have ways to measure the results of an ad or brand campaign. The art of business requires this. It’s in business. It’s not Monopoly money!

If your marketer doesn’t have a system to do this, you should be a little suspicious and reconsider using them. You may like them as a person but that doesn’t mean that they are the absolute best candidate for the task. They should definitely have a way for you to measure their effort and results. Friend’s are friends but the numbers don’t lie.

I’ve actually had people say to me “Advertising and branding can’t be measured and since they can’t be measured, how will we ever know if it works?”

This seems to me like an odd question. Of course marketing, advertising, and branding can be measured. Companies on the corporate level do it all the time. They have to. How else would they know if their ads and branding are working or not?

Below is a simple formula For measuring. Please keep in mind that I’m an adman, brander, writer, and designer. Economics isn’t my forté but this little method makes perfect sense. Our clients like it and use it.

 

Here it goes:

All you have to do is compare the numbers of the two previous years with a month after you launch a new ad or brand campaign. Next is an example I used for a little entrepreneur ‘brick and mortar’ in Astoria.

Her business opened in May 2014. I started working with her in 2015. I promised her that I would be able to triple her gross income. She was skeptical until I hit the numbers as promised.

As you can see, I tripled her income from the first year to the second. Then in the second year, I was only able to (do little more than) double her gross income. The reason for me being able to only DOUBLE her gross income was because she wanted to keep a pair of previous employees to return from the previous year. She felt a sense out of loyalty to them.

Her decision to keep the employees would cost her roughly $7,000-9,000 per month. It’s not the smartest business move but people like their pain, their power, and/or their comfort zones.

Why would this seemingly inconsequential decision cost her $7,000-9,000 per month? It seems a little excessive, doesn’t it?

HERE IS WHY:

1) The employees, rightly so, were used to do things on their terms, in their own way. ACCORDING TO THEM, everything was fine last year and the income was tripled. When these employees started they learned just 20 techniques to do in each customer interaction. I taught them, they learned and executed the assignment. In order to triple the income for the 2016 summer, they would have to learn 30 new techniques in customer interaction.

2) ONE young woman she would want to MANAGE the store was her neice. Family employees in business are never a good recipe for success.

3) The owner wasn’t about to pay them twice the hourly rate to learn 30 more techniques.

4) These part-time high school students would have seniority over the new employees (college students and graduates) and a power struggle would likely result. Sure enough, it did.

5) All the new employees learned 50 techniques before starting work. These 50 techniques were advanced communication strategies to be used in each customer interaction. This worked perfectly but, the previous years’ employees struggled and resisted the new changes and protocol. If it were up to me, their disobedience would have resulted in them being fired on the spot.

Despite this, in June 2016, I nearly tripled her income to $45,000 but, she also decided to suddenly change the serving size of the scoops and cups to smaller portions, mid-season, without warning anyone. This was a disaster.

Once she realized that the weekly income was decreasing and she was losing customer confidence and goodwill, she went back to the old portion size. The problem was that it was already too late. In just two weeks, she derailed the flow of the customer’s expectation— a tragic error.

She lost some very excellent, consistent, and loyal customers with this single act of greed. The old adage applies: “Penny wise, pound foolish.”

 

We parted ways left mid-July over my financial compensation. The contract we had in place was a performance-based arrangement that she misunderstood as time (hours worked) based agreement. My contracted assignment was complete when 3 consecutive months in (April, May June 2016) doubled the previous year (2015) as promised. It was July, my assignment and numbers were met and I did this with a strategy.

Today, she is out of business and it is unlikely she’ll re-surface this year or any other. Her business acumen is that of the novice.

 

MEASURE

I have a new potential client who wants to increase business. He has a successful wholesale and retail business. He also said: “It’s easy to measure our wholesale business because 100 new restaurants are 100 new restaurants.”

So I asked him: “Do you have a cash register?”

“Yes.”

“Is it electric?” I said, has every right to ask this question. He’s an old fashioned butcher in Queens with three full lamb carcasses strung up by their hind legs in the window.

“Yes, of course.” He answered.

“Do you keep the data and have accounting records?”

“Yes.”

“Is the business growing every year?”

“Yes, especially over the last four years.”

I said: “Excellent, then we’ll 1) take a look at the numbers for March, April, & May for 2015/2016 and compare them to 2017. Then 2) we’ll project your income adding in the percentage of growth already anticipated. 3) Any INCREASE above the 2015/2016 gross income plus the projected growth expected is what WE DID TO GROW THE BUSINESS. 4) This usually happens a month AFTER we launch a campaign. So anything above the normal income growth would be attributed to the craft and work of the campaign.”

His eyes lit up. HE SMILED. He got it. Apparently, no marketer, ad person, or sales agent he had worked with proposed a way to measure a marketing (ad or brand) effort in this way.

Personally, I find NOT KNOWING this is baffling. This is how you measure marketing efforts in any company, large or small.

What’s even more baffling is realizing that even when we grown the business by 300% some clients don’t rehire us. It’s as though they are hardwired to regress back into their comfort zones. The psychology suggests that they see their business as an amalgamated extension of themselves.

Often we only offer 300% because 500% or 800% is just too unbelievable. It could be done but in all likelihood the business owner will have a meltdown. We’ve all heard the stories of lottery winners spending everything in a year or two. The same applies to indy business owners and for those unprepared for this type of growth, the notion can be psychologically overwhelming for them.

So, 300% it is. And again, sometimes the clients don’t want to rehire us. I’m convinced that some are crisis-orientated, others have a strange affinity with their old struggle and pain, and others just want to be comfortable. Either way, it’s an interesting Neurochemical reaction to observe. It is also something to measure.

• Measure the client’s mind first.
• Measure their previous performance
• Measure your performance.

I hope this excerpt gave you a surefire way to measure performance. Have a great day.

 

Now I’m supposed to say: Call Breuk for more info @ (718) 578-6613 but, I’m not going to say that. Instead I’ll say: “You probably think you can figure out the 300% growth all on your own and only need to find that little silver bullet.”

Go ahead. You’ll save a ton of money this way.

We’re still looking for that silver bullet too. We don’t think it exists.

 

🤒 : Breuk Iversen
🤖 : (718) 578-6613
👹 : BinkNyc.com
😍 : BinkNyc@gmail.com