Marketing metrics is a big term that can get quite confusing.  The term covers media impressions, gross rating points, and many other established pieces of measurement.  There are even new measurements involved as well as a large amount of software tools.  There are plenty of websites out there that consultants, professional organizations, agencies, and even software companies run that can help you find out the details on individual metrics.  But those sources only work if you know what you are looking to find.

As a marketer, you may first want to look at the big picture.  After that, you might want to go into more of the marketing metrics details in order to fully understand what you have to work with for each marketing picture.  If you need help with advertising metrics, there are seven basic measurements that you need to take in regards to where and how you should spend your budget money.

1. Reach-the measurement that includes the size of the audience that you will communicate your message to each time the marketing device is displayed.
2. Frequency-the number of times an individual or household will see your ad, on average.
3. Gross Rating Points-the frequency times the reach.
4. Target Rating points-the gross rating points multiplied by the ratio of the target audience against the total audience.
5. Impressions-the number of exposures a person or household within the target audience will see the ad.
6. Cost per thousand-the cost to reach 1,000 people.
7. Cost Per point-the cost to reach one percent of the total audience.

With these figures in place, it will be much easier to utilize any marketing budget to its full capacity and measure the return profits.  Return on investment, also called ROI, is one of the most important aspects of marketing metrics.  Companies want to know whether or not their marketing is working in a very tangible way.  The ROI is usually expressed by using percentages.  In order to get an accurate figure, the company will need to subtract the advertising dollars from the amount of excess profits that were generated while the advertising campaign took place.

In order to apply marketing measurements correctly, first choose an easy item to measure.  There are some things that are easy while other seem nearly impossible.  Measuring easy items are a great place to start.  They will help a company gain confidence in the marketing metrics formats and there will also be added experience.  Once the easy item has been defeated, the company can move on to more complicated forms.

After a company is more experienced, it should think about what marketing realms are the most important to measure in a metric sense and tackle those next.  Be reasonable while the marketing metrics process gets up to speed.  No company can measure every detail of every campaign all the time.  Some things can’t be measured at reasonable costs and other things are too small to bother measuring.  The company will need to balance where the marketing metrics are best utilized to further its interests.