Measuring What They Thought

There are several marketing metrics for measuring What They Thought, or what your target audience thought of your communications. This category of metrics is concerned with questions such as:

1. Did they notice your ad?
2. Did they remember your ad?
3. Did they understand the messages in your press coverage?
4. Did they believe the messages?

The category does not include any actions (behavior); for example:

1. click-throughs
2. telephone calls to your toll-free numbers
3. online views of your product demo
4. online purchases
5. in-store purchases

So, in general, it includes what they thought (mental states), but not what they did (actions), as a result of your communications.

Let's notice two important distinctions between measuring mental states and measuring actions:

First, when you measure mental states, you usually measure the mental states of aggregates, not individuals.

For example, if you take a survey and ask people which type of car they prefer, you are interested in the aggregate numbers and percentages, not in the opinion of any one person whom you surveyed.

In contrast, when you track the actions of members of your target audience, you are very much interested in individuals, for the purposes of tracking what they did later.

For example, if a prospect responds to an ad by calling your 800 number and requesting an information packet to be mailed to him, or clicks your web ad and downloads more information, you want to know whether that particular person buys something, because the gross profit from his purchase will be part of the ROI from that ad. And you want to give all the due "credit" to every ad.

Second, measuring mental states cannot help you calculate ROI; it is navigational, not evaluative.

Measurement Tools for Mental States

Specialized equipment for measuring Eye Movements can tell you a lot about how customers pay attention to (or ignore) your ads, commercials, web pages, product packaging, and retail displays – and tell you with accuracy and precision.

Message Testing enables you to privately try out a set of messages to determine the most persuasive message in the set and then use that one in public.

An Editorial Survey enables you to find out what editors (or other influencers such as industry analysts) know about your company, product or service.

The next category is What They Did, or the actions that people in your target audience took as a result of seeing or hearing your communications.

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