How to measure offline marketing with online metrics?

Introduction

The issue with offline marketing is tracking. For many offline marketing efforts, such as exhibitions and networking events, it’s hard to track results.

Participation in these events is often expensive, and the results are evaluated on a qualitative basis. Although qualitative evaluation is better than nothing, quantitative data is obviously better. And in many cases, we can do that – all we need it the measuring mindset and a little bit of creativity.

The bottom line is: If you’re spending a lot of money into offline marketing, you have to justify its performance. Otherwise you don’t know how well the money turns into desired outcomes, let alone how well event A compared with event B in terms of performance.

The simple solution

The issue can be solved by using metrics. For example, if we are selling in a trade fair, I can use performance metrics like these:

  • sales (€, qty)
  • number of catalogs and/or flyers distributed
  • number of emails gathered via a lead-generation contest (“give us your email – win prize x”)

Of course, knowing the cost of participation, we can now calculate composite metrics such as:

  • Direct ROI = (sales – cost) / cost
  • Cost per lead (email) = cost / number of emails
  • Cost per catalogue distributed = cost / number of catalogues distributed

These can be now measured against digital channels, and evaluated whether or not we’d like to participate in the event in question again, say, next year.

Comparing offline and online performance

During my time as a marketing manager, I’ve come up with different ways to standardize the offline metrics, that is to say calculate offline marketing activities so that they are comparable with digital channels.

Here are three ways we’ve been using.

1. Cost per card

  • CPCa = cost of participation / number of business cards collected
  • Compare with: CPL

Networking is an important part of the sales cycle, especially in B2B markets. By quantifying the results, you are able to compare one event against another, as well as compare the results with lead generation (CPL) through digital channels
(for this, only include the business cards of potential customers).

2. Cost per catalog

  • CPCat = cost of distribution / number of catalogues distributed
  • Compare with: CPC

In Finland, I’ve found that catalog distribution inside magazines is a cost-effective form of marketing. This metric I compare with Google CPC, i.e. the cost of average paid user via Google. The rationale is that since the catalog is inside the customer’s favorite magazine, she will surely take a look at it (during the reading
session you tend to have more time).

3. Cost per festival contact

  • CPF = cost of participation / number of visitors
  • Compare with: CPM

Summer festivals are hot in Finland. Every year, there is more than a dozen big festivals across the country. We’re participating in some of them together with our suppliers. Festivals most often provide you with the number previous year’s visitors. I find it best to compare this metric with CPM, since the visitors are just
hypothetical contacts.

Of course, we can use several metrics, so for festivals I use CPF to evaluate which ones are the most cost-effective ones (that’s one, but the not the only criterion, since the match between us and the target audience is more important). Then, to evaluate how well we did, I’ll use the other metrics, mainly cost per lead (email) and cost per catalog distributed.

Hopefully this article gave you some useful ideas. If you have something to share, please write in in the comments. Thanks for reading.

I’m into digital marketing, startups, platforms. Download my dissertation on startup dilemmas: http://goo.gl/QRc11f