What steps can you take to ensure accurate and unbiased campaign evaluation?

1 Define clear and SMART objectives

Before you launch your campaign, you need to define what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. These criteria help you set realistic and meaningful objectives that are aligned with your overall marketing strategy and can be tracked and evaluated. For example, instead of saying "I want to increase sales", you can say "I want to increase sales by 10% in the next quarter by targeting existing customers with a loyalty program".

3 Establish a baseline and a control group

To evaluate the impact of your campaign, you need to compare it with a baseline and a control group. A baseline is the starting point or the pre-campaign situation that you want to improve. A control group is a subset of your target audience that is not exposed to your campaign. By comparing the results of your campaign group and your control group, you can isolate the effect of your campaign from other factors that might influence your outcomes. For example, if you want to test the effect of a new landing page design, you can split your web traffic into two groups: one that sees the old design and one that sees the new design.

4 Use multiple sources and perspectives

To avoid confirmation bias and cherry-picking, you need to use multiple sources and perspectives to collect and analyze your data. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek and interpret information that confirms your pre-existing beliefs or expectations. Cherry-picking is the tendency to select and highlight only the data that supports your desired conclusion. To overcome these biases, you need to use a variety of data sources, such as qualitative and quantitative, primary and secondary, internal and external. You also need to use different perspectives, such as your own, your customers', your competitors', and your stakeholders'.

5 Review and refine your process

Finally, you need to review and refine your process to ensure that your campaign evaluation is consistent, transparent, and actionable. You need to document your objectives, methods, tools, data, analysis, and findings, and share them with your team and stakeholders. You need to check for errors, gaps, and inconsistencies in your data and analysis, and address them accordingly. You need to draw insights and recommendations from your findings, and use them to inform your next steps and decisions. You also need to solicit feedback and suggestions from your team and stakeholders, and incorporate them into your process.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?