Synchronizing Your Goals
Even if you do multiple tactics at various budget and effort levels, the results for each tactic should be measured around the same goals. If you have a $50 target CPA, for example, that goal should be universal across all your tactics; the success of each tactic should be measured according to that $50 target CPA.
You should compare your actual CPAs (the ones you actually get) among tactics in order to find out which tactic gives you the best ROMI. The closer the actual CPA is to your target CPA, the more cost-effective the tactic is for your company, and the better your ROMI will be for that tactic.
Note: Let me caution you: Do not to try to measure your actual CPA among tactics too early in the campaign. For example, if you’re just starting up and you compare the costs of using display advertising against the costs of attending trade shows, you may find that your initial CPA is very out of balance in favor of display advertising.
But further down the road, when you get to the point where your customers are actually buying the products, your CPA may even out between trade shows and display advertising. You may have a $100 CPA on trade shows but an 80% conversion rate. And you may have a $20 CPA on display advertising but only a 2% conversion rate. In other words, don’t discount a tactic too early because you think that the initial costs are too high. (See the case example in Chapter 5 for a more complete analysis of the comparison of trade shows and display advertising.)
In an integrated campaign, it’s imperative to create a measurement tool that lets you compare the results of each tactic on an apples-to-apples basis. It should be a spreadsheet, a CRM tool, or a lead-scoring tool that will help you to quantify the effectiveness of a tactic. Without some kind of tool that enables you to compare your results of one tactic with those of the others, you may end up wasting a lot of money on less efficient and cost-effective tactics. Only by comparing the results among tactics can you tell how well a certain tactic works for your business.