Set ‘trigger points’ to control your results

Set ‘trigger points’ to control your results

Controlled Investments represent the apex of the Six Sigma Marketing hierarchy.  Once we have rationalized and improved investments to create the ideal marketing mix, we must maintain this new level of return.

Controlling a process means setting up reporting limits to signal when those investments are going “out of control.”   Out of control means a process is yielding results that are not within the expected range. In other words, you’re not getting the results you want and expect.

This is normally a process of management by exception rather than active analysis.  In other words, we don’t necessarily need to know that the process is in control – we expect that.  Instead, we only want to know when the process has crossed the boundaries of acceptable levels.

This information is critical to the management process so that we are clearly alerted to take action to maintain our hard-fought gains when necessary. 

In order to report more completely on a group of activities, we may use a “dashboard.”  Just as a car dashboard gives a driver data on how the car is performing, the marketing “dashboard” reports important data on our marketing programs.