4 tactics for keeping measurement in your budget

For three decades I’ve heard communications professionals whine that they want to measure results but they just don’t have the budget for it. Enough already.

Budgeting is a matter of setting priorities. A former client of mine put it this way: “When it came to measurement, you were my right arm. I could always slash off a pinkie, but I was never going to cut off my right arm.”

We stayed in his budget year after year, because he used his data to make better decisions. One year we showed him that a major song-and-dance show they were staging at a trade show was yielding very little in terms of qualified sales leads. Sure, the research cost him $20K or so to do, but he saved $50K out of his trade show budget for every show thereafter.

How do you make measurement your right arm? You do it regularly, you don’t make decisions without it, and you make sure the head honcho knows you’re basing your decisions on solid facts, not hunches.

Here are four tips to make sure measurement stays in your budget:

1. Start with a pilot measurement program, and build on it.