Marketers have no shortage of metrics for measuring campaign performance. Click-through rates, conversions, cost per lead and return on investment can all tell you whether activity is delivering results. But when a business operates across different locations, the overall figures can hide an important part of the story. So where is the campaign actually working?
The same campaign can perform very differently from one area to another. Customer profiles vary, competition changes, individual locations have different levels of awareness and some markets may simply offer greater potential than others.
Adding location to campaign analysis can help businesses understand those differences and make better decisions about where future marketing activity and budget should be focused.
Here are five metrics worth considering.
1. Conversion rates by location
An overall conversion rate tells you how a campaign performed across the entire audience. Breaking that figure down geographically can reveal much more.
One area might generate plenty of enquiries but relatively few conversions, while another produces fewer leads but converts a much higher proportion of them. Mapping those results can reveal patterns that would be difficult to spot in a spreadsheet of overall campaign figures.
The next step is understanding why those differences exist. Demographics, customer profiles, local competition and existing brand presence can all provide useful context. Rather than immediately changing the campaign, marketers can investigate what is different about the areas where it performs particularly well or poorly.
2. Cost per customer or lead by location
Cost per lead is useful, but the cheapest lead isn’t necessarily the most valuable one.
A campaign might cost more to acquire customers in one location but attract people who spend more, buy more frequently or remain customers for longer. Another area could deliver inexpensive leads that rarely convert into valuable customers. Looking at acquisition cost geographically and comparing it with customer value provides a more useful picture of campaign performance.
It can also help with future budget allocation. Instead of assuming that marketing spend should be distributed evenly across an estate or territory, businesses can identify where additional investment might have the greatest potential and where the economics are less attractive.
3. Customer value by location
Not all customers contribute the same value, and geography can sometimes reveal patterns in those differences.
Combining transaction or customer data with location can show whether particular areas generate higher-value customers, more frequent purchases or stronger repeat business. For a multi-site business, it can also help reveal differences between the customers using individual locations or catchments. These patterns shouldn’t be viewed in isolation. A higher average customer value in one area might be influenced by demographics, affluence, the type of location or even differences in the local proposition.
Understanding that context helps marketers move beyond simply identifying where valuable customers are, and start investigating why those areas perform differently.
4. Customer penetration by area
A map showing large concentrations of customers can look impressive, but customer numbers alone don’t tell you how well a market is being captured.
Imagine one postcode contains 500 customers and another contains 300. At first glance, the first area appears stronger. But if it contains 20,000 potential customers while the second contains only 2,000, the picture changes considerably. Customer penetration compares the customers you already have with the potential market available in an area. This can help distinguish between locations where a business already has a strong presence and those where there may still be considerable headroom.
For marketers, that can reveal areas worth investigating further. A market with the right customer profile but relatively low penetration might warrant additional activity, while a high-penetration area may require a different approach.
5. Return on investment by location
Overall ROI remains important, but looking at it geographically can reveal which parts of a campaign are contributing most strongly to the result.
Comparing marketing spend with the customers, sales or revenue generated in different areas can help identify locations where activity is producing a stronger return and those where performance deserves closer investigation.
That doesn’t mean automatically moving every pound of budget towards the areas with the highest current ROI. Some locations may be established markets, while others are being developed for future growth. Local competition, market potential and customer characteristics all need to be considered alongside the financial result. The value of location analysis is that it provides this additional context.
From measuring campaigns to improving targeting
Location metrics shouldn’t simply produce another marketing dashboard. Their real value comes from using the patterns they reveal to inform what happens next. Conversion rates, acquisition costs, customer value, penetration and ROI can all tell you something individually. Bring them together with demographic, consumer, competitor and location data, and businesses can begin to understand why campaigns perform differently from one market to another.
Periscope® combines customer and location data to help businesses understand where their customers are, identify geographic patterns and make more informed decisions about where future marketing activity should be focused.
Instead of simply asking “Did our campaign work?”, marketers can ask a more useful question:
“Where did it work best, why, and where should we focus next?”
