How to Measure the Results of Design
Someone asked me this fantastic question on Linkedin the other day —
“How can I measure the results of my designs?”
We all want to know the ROI of design, branding, and strategy, don’t we? We want to know the exact value that our work is bringing to our clients. If we knew the value, we’d be able to communicate that value to our client AND we’d be so much more confident in what we charge. We’d most likely land higher budget projects since we’d have a proven track record of producing more than just pretty designs because we’re actually helping the business accomplish their goals.
My answer to that question was this:
“Ask your client how they will measure the success of the project. You need to find out their goals and what they expect your work will do for their business. It may be an answer you never thought of. That's why we won't know until we ask our clients.”
Michael Kristof added some great points:
“Exactly. Design can't always be measured but how the client perceives success is HUGE. It can define what to create, the format, media, and delivery – which can sometimes be completely different than what the client thought they needed.
I always stress the importance of asking clients WHY they need something. You'd be surprised how often a client will jump directly to WHAT they think they need as opposed to presenting the problem to their marketing/creative team. Then letting them provide guidance for HOW to achieve their goals.”
It’s all about how your client’s perceive success. How will you and your client know the project they hired you for was a success? How are they measuring success? We should never assume we know the answer to that question going in. We must realize that our client has motivations and goals that aren’t obvious and that every person on earth measures success differently.
Go into sales meetings empty and ready to learn. And before you end the call, make sure you and the client both know how you will measure the success of the project. Get quantifiable numbers so that you know whether or not the project, design, and/or strategy you’ve worked on with them is moving the needle for their business.
I just used this strategy on a recent branding project. Luckily, this client was rebranding an already successful business. However, they had goals they wanted to reach and knew that branding would help them reach those goals. When I asked what success would look like if we knocked this out of the park, I was able to uncover how the client would gauge success.
Here are some of the things they wanted to do:
- Increase awareness by growing their YouTube following by 15% in 3 months.
- Build their list to 10k email subscribers in 3 months
- Increase speaking engagements (land 1 this year)
When they mentioned vague goals like “increase speaking engagements,” I immediately asked them “how many speaking engagements?” and “by when?” The more hard numbers I can get with a deadline, the better. This way, I’m able to follow up with them every few months and see if things are on track (Which they are! Yay!) and make sure we're all aiming at the same target.
This works with startups too, by the way. In my example, we had numbers that we started with as our baseline. With a new business, your client’s baseline is zero. But you still need to ask how they’ll measure success because they care about things that are very unique and specific to them.
Branding alone isn’t the only thing that influences these goals. There are SO many variables in business—from internal processes and operations, to marketing, employee problems, personal things, etc. But remember, those goals and success metrics were given to me from my client. They viewed branding as a way to help them in all those areas listed above. And if I thought one of those goals were too far out there, that’s when I would bring in my expertise and suggest a more realistic goal.
The lesson? The return on investment is directly measured by what our clients value.
And we can’t guess what our clients value. We have to ask.
-Melinda
This post was originally sent to my Strategy Stories newsletter subscribers.
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