Part 6: Setting the right metrics and KPIs in your brand plan

This month we tackle one of the most important and most frequently neglected parts of the brand plan: the metrics and KPIs that give you valuable, regular feedback on your progress towards your brand plan goals and the operational effectiveness of your tactics.

In my marketing excellence work across the industry over the years, KPIs and measurement repeatedly come up as one of the most important topics for training or support. Some marketers just run out of time when it comes to this final section of the brand plan, others shy away
from giving numbers and targets from a lack of confidence in setting the right target or being seen to fail. But with a bit of time and practice, the measurement section of your brand plan can take on a clear shape and structure, and then be used for some quality operational brand team reviews.

There is a clear disconnect between accepted marketing measurement theory and the definition and use of KPIs and metrics in practice. In a recent audit of ten brand plans (global and local) across ten different pharma/biotech companies from 2015-2018, I found the following:

• Only one out of the ten brand plans had SMART objectives linked to their KPIs
• Only four out of the ten brand plans contained KPIs, and only one of these brand plans contained KPIs with a clear timeline and target
• Only three out of the ten brand plans included a budget for market research, measurement and tracking.

So let’s start with a couple of definitions: what is a metric and what is a KPI? Essentially a metric is any measure that we can define to give us feedback on our brand plan’s effectiveness, while a KPI is just that; they are the few key metrics that we define as being the most important to focus on. You may have many metrics within your plan but only eight to ten KPIs that will form the basis of your research, tracking and reporting as a cross-functional brand team.

The starting point for creating a good measurement section in your brand plan rests with the quality of your commercial, financial and marketing objectives earlier in your plan. Many brand planning frameworks don’t actually stipulate the need to create one- to three-year SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) objectives.

If you haven’t already done so, I would strongly recommend that you create some clear objectives to include: number of patients treated, number and frequency of prescribers by segment where possible, desired attitude and behaviour change, access levels, sales, market share, advocacy levels and patient/prescriber experience objectives, to name but a few.