What Is The Real Measure of Response?

Everyone who invests in advertising expects to receive some kind of benefit. In the field of area promotion the measure of success is usually stated as "inquiry response."

How do you measure that?

The easiest thing to do is simply to tally the bingo cards received. That will give some kind of clue as to the number of publication readers who are prone to fill out cards and ask for free information as of a certain period of time.

Experienced marketers know, however, that there is a huge difference between this type of apparent response and the kind of real response they want. Evaluating real response requires a different set of criteria.

Recently we asked some people in the area marketing field how they would rank various indicators of real response. Here is a composite tally of their criteria, in descending order of importance:

1. Without question, the best measure is an actual facility location decision resulting in a plant being built and placed in operation in the service territory. This happy result may reflect response to an ad program which stretched over several years.
2. A visit to the area by a corporate executive engaged in a site survey. This meant that the advertising effort gave the area a chance to make the sale.
3. A telephone call from a corporate executive asking for specific information. This is an indication of more than casual interest.
4. A letter asking for a list of specified data. This indicates that the area is included on a list of locations being scanned.
5. An electronic inquiry via the GeoFax service asking for a file on the area. This suggests that the inquirer -- whatever his interest -- wants information in a hurry.
6. A comment made by an executive at a meeting -- most likely an IDRC session. This reveals he saw your ad.
7. A bingo card asking for information on a particular area. At least, the executive may be building a file for future reference.
8. An executive attends a conference arranged or promoted by a publication. You can safely assume he has seen the publication, but you don't know if he saw your ad.

Adding them up

Most of these are "flesh and blood" measures of response. All of them count. Any attempt to measure advertising effectiveness via only one or two of these criteria is likely to be misleading.

What the astute advertiser must do is determine in his mind which publication can deliver the greatest total flesh-and-blood influence over a span of years.