The Marketing Performance Measurement Toolkit. David Raab. Chicago, IL: Racom Books, 291 pp. $39.95 pbk.
David Raab’s book is designed for marketing professionals who want to mea-sure marketing program effectiveness. It is based on his thirty-plus years as a consultant and principal in his firm specializing in marketing technology and analysis, Raab Associates, Inc. The book does not tell the reader what to do, but is instead designed to show the reader how to decide what to do.
Raab organizes the book into seven major steps for the process: defining project goals, scope, and success criteria; researching the business to understand what is important and what’s achievable; defining marketing plans based on business strategies; selecting measures and metrics suited to the marketing plans; identifying the data sources and calculations for the measure and metrics; selecting technologies suited to the company’s needs; and developing, deploying, and enhancing the marketing measurement system.
Each chapter includes blank worksheets and scorecards to help readers organize information about their own project along with completed worksheets as examples. The blank worksheets and scorecards are also available on the author’s company Web site (raabassociatesinc.com), and more information is also available at one of his blogs: the MPM Toolkit blog (mpmtoolkit.blogspot.com). As the author notes, the worksheets and scorecards are probably most valuable in terms of the discussions they elicit rather than the actual numbers they may generate.
Several chapters focus on the specifics of marketing performance measurement, and may be of particular interest to professors in marketing, advertising, and public relations. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the “Balanced Scorecard” approach to defining business strategy, and then aligning marketing plans and the marketing measurement project with that strategy. Raab uses the imaginary launch of a revolutionary new device called the “uFone” to guide the reader through these processes and the appropriate worksheets.
Chapter 7 explores a variety of different types of metrics for three common types of project goals: justifying marketing investments, demonstrating strategic alignment, and measuring marketing execution. The chapter includes a summary of key measures and metrics appropriate for each type of goal. In addition, the chapter is linked to a fifty-five-page appendix of sample metrics. The appendix is quite comprehensive, and divides these metrics into two categories: corporate metrics that describe performance of the company as a whole, and channel metrics that describe performance within a specific contact channel.
Chapter 8 covers advanced analytics such as brand value, return on investment, customer value, response measurement, multivariate testing, marketing mix models, simulation models, and optimization models. The chapter’s analytics readiness scorecard lists conditions that support selected analytic techniques. Chapter 9 then provides advice on selecting the best measures and metrics for any individual company’s situation.
The final chapters discuss technologies used in marketing performance measurement solutions and what to look for from the vendors who provide these technologies.
Throughout the book, several themes emerge. These include the reality that every decision must reflect the specific business situation; the limits of marketing information; the imperative of stakeholder consensus; and the iterative process and incremental thinking that goes into the development of a marketing performance measurement program. These themes reflect the author’s experiences as a consultant with the most common difficulties that arise in measuring marketing program effectiveness.
While The Marketing Performance Measurement Toolkit is a valuable resource, it is not a textbook. Individual chapters may be helpful for some readers who need information about specific marketing measures and metrics, but this is not an appropriate text for any but the most advanced of undergraduate courses, and is most likely useful as a supplement for some graduate marketing courses.
JOE BOB HESTER
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill