6 Marketing Productivity Metrics (PAR Purchase Action Ratio and BAR Brand Advocacy Ratio)
1. Introducing PAR and BAR
Purchase Action Ratio (PAR) and Brand Advocacy Ratio (BAR) are the main metrics that are needs to be tracked these days. Far from the usual social media metrics and digital channel metrics, this gives a broader sense of how well companies convert in terms of Sales and Positive influence. BAR focuses on Advocacy while PAR on purchases. There are numerous metrics like Search Engine Conversion Ratio, Social Media Engagement Score, Visitor Conversion Ratio for website, Social Media ROI, CPA, CPM, CPC, Bounce rate for emails, Unsubscribe rates and the list goes on. Thus, the most important ingredient to a success of a business is the Purchase conversion (PAR) and the No. of people actually recommending you (BAR).
In application, in 3,336 quotations made, 801 booked and 8 recommended the brand (this is based on original data for 2016) PAR is 801/3,336 = 24 % (low) because the ideal is at least 80% and the BAR is 9/801 = 1.12% for the resort.
2. Decomposing PAR and BAR
To determine profitability of a company, ROE may be a considered metric to summarize Profitability (as measured by net profit margin), Asset Use Efficiency (as measure of asset turnover) and Financial Leverage (as measure by equity multiplier). The goal is to have a higher ROE which means high profitability, maximized assets and high leverage. However, high leverage can be narrowed down to determine over leverage and under leverage.
Breaking PAR and BAR can give additional insights that aids the company to understand better when some data may be missing. Other formulas may be, PAR = Act/Total Market Share + Aware/Total market or Customer/Total Market Share / Aware / Total market or simply Market Share/Brand Awareness.
With PAR, market Share is always half % of brand awareness and this is a determinant on how marketers should be careful in spending.
Low conversion rate |
Means |
aware to appeal |
Poor customer attraction and low brand positioning due to poor marketing implementation. Attraction level is close to 1. |
appeal to ask |
Low customer curiosity, customers are not compelled to ask questions |
ask to act |
Low commitment, people talks about the brand but do not buy, guests might find the service to be disappointing. |
act to advocate |
Low affinity, experience at the resort was not great and not worth sharing or recommending. Goal is to increase compassion level. |
With Bar, shows the outcome, the ideal bar score is 1. The goal is to go through the entire 5A’s without dropping out.
Low conversion rate |
Means |
5 A’s any given stage |
A bottleneck, reduces productivity of the entire customer path, determines touch points that needs improvement. Altering bottleneck improves PAR and BAR. |
BAR = (Appeal / Awareness) ( Ask/Appeal) (Act/Ask) (Avocates/Affinity)
BAR |
Means |
LOYALTY |
IMPROVE ON |
APPEAL |
Poor customer attraction and low brand positioning due to poor marketing implementation. Attraction level is close to 1. |
ATTRACTION |
· Repositioning · Marketing Communication |
ASK |
Low customer curiosity, customers are not compelled to ask questions |
CURIOSITY |
· Community Marketing · Content Marketing
|
ACT |
Low commitment, people talks about the brand but do not buy, guests might find the service to be disappointing. |
COMMITMENT |
· Channel · Management |
ADVOCATE |
Low affinity, experience at the resort was not great and not worth sharing or recommending. Goal is to increase compassion level. |
AFFINITY |
· Loyalty · Program |
3. Driving Up Productivity
The driving force to increased productivity is improved awareness. Digital Channel is the latest and less costly way of driving awareness to your brand. Connectivity through social media and other digital platforms may trigger conversation and give information to those who have not heard of the product yet. People tend to listen and watch through YouTube to learn about a product, they read reviews on blogs and read comments and recommendation. It is said the previous chapters that customer tends to trust strangers posting reviews more than what the company website says or company advertisements. Leveraging on guests conversation online. Online content cannot be directly controlled by the company same with how we cannot control the sentiments that are being posted on social media Facebook page, we don’t practice deleting negative comments or harsh feedback because it is rude to the guest, we just address this and as much as possible settle things in a private chat room then if possible to request the removal of such comment. Customer conversation may reduce cost of advertising online and other costs and the challenge is to have positive advocates and positive mentions. However, this should not be the only medium to maximize companies advertising potentials, it is still best to have your own digital plan which has online and offline strategies to tap target market. Brands cannot solely rely on “outer” zone to build a good brand reputation.
To drive productivity to the resort here are the ways to leverage on a strategy.
1. Increase Attraction – Our value proposition is that we provide a pampered camping venue that is suited for all ages. Quality prime grade Kawayans and a decent restroom, we are also a good venue for team building and weddings. We have community building, we provide a camping ground as big as 4 HA, we engage in environmental activities and the list goes on and this set us apart from other camping sites. These information should be set clear to the market and communicated properly. The company also practice a culture that best fit the tourism industry, brand character and a brand voice and we stick to it as much as possible.
Sample of our brand voice is cool, calm, and collected and could make you feel relaxed and stress free; it talks like a best friend or a good companion; it is warm and welcoming; it treats its guest like a family member. It has an on-the-go attitude; it is ready to accept visitors and guests anytime 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is expressive of individuality and encourages simplicity and freedom.
Brand Character:
1. Young, Adventurous & Romantic (trendy and has respect for nature)
2. Reasonable & Compassionate (competitive pricing)
3. Adaptable & Fit for all season (can customize packages)
4. Friendly & Sociable (easy to talk to)
5. Generous & Kind (do not hesitate in giving upgrades)
6. Helpful & Reliable (give exceptional assistance and value added services to guest)
7. Polite, warm hearted & Environmental friendly (engage in environmental protection activities and rehabilitation)
The resort interact with guests like a family member and interact talk as a friend.
2. Optimize Curiosity – When guests have high expectation, it simply means that they have not researched well enough to know what the resort can offer and this also means that they have little curiosity, when expectations are not set properly, there are disappointed guests who may write a negative review. Optimizing curiosity means creating truthful content and spreading the correct information about the services and products. Content marketing in blogs, press releases, info graphics etc. plays a vital role in this part, it has to be creative, enticing and not to lengthy nor misleading. These content should also be ”searchable and shareable”
3. Increase Commitment – An efficient inventory, reservations and after sales or loyalty program system are just a few processes that can be utilized to have an efficient and effective operation. Increasing commitment means having the sense of urgency and speed in providing available rooms and answering customer requests and inquiries. Maintaining 100% response rate on FB page is a good example. We make sure that the process are streamlined to achieve a hassle free transaction from the time a guest inquires till after the outing with our after sales program system. Commitment is also maximizing the inter connectivity of all digital channels.
4. Increase Affinity –Post purchase is very important in increasing loyal advocates. At the resort aim to be a part of the family outing even at the planning stage. Reservations officers talk like they are actually with them during the outing and make it sure that the people who are trying to customize a package will arrive at a very convenient yet reasonable outing package. We also empathize with the guests when tripods get lost, cameras buried in the sand, wallets misplaced. We ship these to them and guaranty security and do the extra mile to deliver in person. We would want to remain consistent without brand character of upholding values of honesty and integrity. Gamification is also done in Instagarm contests and we reward the winners by sending them the price and a handwritten personalized note from the owner.
A. How can your business adopt the new metrics of PAR and BAR to measure marketing productivity?
It is shown in the given example in no 1. Question that we can compute for BAR and PAR, we need to continue on this because PAR is heavily linked to the financial health of the company by giving metrics that is relation to actual sales or bookings. Both are measures of productivity of spending and brand awareness. It is logical to say that it is impossible to have bookings without awareness of the brand first. PAR is a purchase action measurement while BAR tracks advocacy that results to sales growth.
B. How can your business trigger favourable customer conversations in order to drive awareness without increasing the marketing budget significantly?
Leaving a positive impression from the beginning, from the time they called to inquire would be an advantage, not to sales pitch but to make them feel at home. Talking like you are a member of the family or group of friends is a way on how they can spread good news about your company. They would say that you are approachable, nice, helpful and friendly is a good trait that not all customer service representative has. Not sounding like robots or information hub. This is what I always remind my staff. Be a part of the outing. Be there when they need ideas, be there, meet the person behind the phone, meet and greet everyone, make them feel important, give additional perks that they did not expect. Have the initiative to reach out and picture the scenario based on expectation and reality without exaggeration. Telling the truth and the downside of some things is also practicing honesty and customer will appreciate it. The awareness will be from “word of mouth” and this is free.