Tracking marketing performance effectively comes down to three key factors:
- Defining the pipelines, audiences, events, and metrics that truly matter to your business.
- Ensuring each element is measured with precision.
- Aligning your team around the data points that drive the most impact.
When these pieces come together, you gain the clarity to track progress, scale insights, and make informed decisions with confidence.
But, how do you get there?
That’s where a marketing measurement plan comes in. This framework acts as a blueprint, outlining the critical components that keep your marketing data and analytics running smoothly.
It helps align stakeholders at every level – whether channel managers, developers, or leadership – so that everyone is working from the same playbook.
Most importantly, it keeps strategy and success metrics anchored to a common goal.
Let’s dive into the key elements and start building one for your business.
The Marketing Measurement Plan In A Nutshell
What Is It?
It is a map of individual inputs for accurate reporting that informs meaningful business insights.
What Does It Do?
It documents the business-critical measurements needed to track the results of a marketing plan and the high-level technical requirements that make it possible.
It doesn’t set benchmarks or goals. Rather, it’s the documentation of the “what” and “how.”
Why Is It Valuable?
1. It Clarifies Reporting Needs For Stakeholders Handling Implementation
Know exactly what’s needed to support the team because it’s all “right there.”
Ideally, stakeholders have played a role in mapping out the measurement model, so they’ll have no problem taking it from ideation to implementation.
2. Tracking Gaps Are Caught Before They Become Problems
There’s nothing quite as disheartening as getting to the end of a campaign and finding critical metrics missing from reporting.
The marketing measurement plan gathers inputs from – and is reviewed by – multiple stakeholders across the team. So, there’s less likelihood of discovering gaps down the road.
3. Creating A Marketing Measurement Plan Breaks Down Silos By Nature
It requires cross-channel and cross-functional input. Then, all of that input gets factored into prioritization at the highest level, documented in a language everyone can speak.
4. It Defines What Matters Most For Strategic Alignment
Is it more important to prioritize traffic or a specific conversion type based on business objectives?
You can see how even just that one important clarification makes a world of difference in strategy at the channel level.
For example, if the answer is conversion, SEO professionals would likely prioritize work specific to product pages over blog URLs in their roadmap.
5. It’s A Helpful Reference For Future Tracking Implementations
If and when new tracking is required, there’s a place to document any additions over time and ensure the tracking doesn’t already exist.
Plus, the implementation team can see everything else that’s already in place, so nothing gets broken in the process.
10 Questions Behind A Marketing Measurement Plan
A marketing measurement plan includes three distinct sections:
- Technical Requirements.
- Events & Audiences.
- Implementation Requirements.
Tech Requirements
Cars can’t go anywhere without roads. Similarly, there needs to be a path for data to travel to the team. You need to map the key data sources, where they intersect, and where all of that data collects.
That’s a matter of answering a couple of questions, which will likely require input from the dev team.
What’s Our Front-End Tech Stack?
Implementing the analytics pipeline looks different depending on what your site uses to serve content.
In some cases, it’s actually multiple platforms, which means there’s additional work on each of them to get data into the same pool.
The Wappalyzer extension is an easy way to look under the hood and see the different platforms in play.
Just remember, it’s giving you information specific to the page rather than the whole site.
So, if you’re looking at a product page that’s served via Shopify, but the blog is built on WordPress, you wouldn’t catch that from the one page.
Screenshot from Wappalyzer extension for Chrome, February 2025Alternatively, if you have access to Sitebulb, you can crawl the site with the Parse Technologies setting enabled.
This will give you a list of technologies used across the site, rather than just testing one page.
Screenshot from Sitebulb Performance & Mobile Friendly Crawler Settings, February 2025When it comes down to it, the best route is to sync with developers, who’ll be able to break down the purpose of each platform.
You’ll want to make sure that the measurement plan includes:
- Front-end JavaScript framework (Vue, React, etc.).
- Framework-specific plug-ins.
- WYSIWYG landing page builders for marketing.
- Platforms for content creation.
Where Do Our Users Come From?
Traffic comes from many places: email, organic search, PPC ads, affiliate articles, etc. The traffic behaves differently based on the source because each source plays a slightly different role in the marketing strategy.
Additionally, each source is made up of different referrers, but not all of those referrers will matter to every business.
For example, a B2B SaaS company probably cares more about LinkedIn than Instagram, whereas the opposite is likely true for an ecommerce brand.
Both sources and referrers need to be mapped for implementation to ensure the audiences are available in reporting.
Mapping source to referrers using social media as an example (Image from author, February 2025)The measurement plan should include the following:
- Direct traffic.
- Organic traffic.
- Paid search.
- Display ads.
- Social media (paid and organic).
- Email.
- Referral (earned links from external websites and media).
- Affiliate (links from PR, Share-a-Sale, paid placements, etc.).
- Other channels you care about (e.g., programmatic, voice if you have an Alexa skill, etc.).
Events & Audiences
The crux of effective marketing is understanding the behavior of the audience.
Which users are most likely to convert? Which behaviors show that users are moving closer to converting? Which promotions are most effective for which types of users?
We can answer these questions by mapping behavior to the marketing funnel, allowing us to understand where different actions fit within the customer journey.
In turn, this helps marketers make the right “ask” of users at the right moment.
A visualization of the marketing funnel (Image from author, February 2025)For example, users coming from a link in an affiliate article are probably less ready to purchase than users who click through an email CTA.
But, they could be willing to exchange their email address for a discount or resource, which would lead them into email, where users are more likely to convert.
To validate that assumption or extract insights, we need the right data. But first, we need to define what the right data is by identifying meaningful behaviors worth tracking.
What’s The Primary Action We Want The User To Take?
Every business has a desired end-point to the digital marketing funnel, a.k.a. a conversion.
The user action considered a conversion differs based on the objectives of the business.
A blog site will want users to subscribe, whereas an ecommerce company will hope to drive a purchase, and B2B SaaS marketing aims to drive qualified leads for the sales team.
The measurement plan should identify the user behavior that represents a conversion, which could include:
- Transaction.
- Request demo.
- Subscription.
- Start a free trial.
What Do Users Do As They Move Down The Funnel?
No one has a 100% conversion rate. The customer journey is made of multiple touchpoints and is not always linear.
To understand those touchpoints, marketers need to define the “micro-conversions” on the path to conversion, i.e., identify the smaller behaviors that users who convert exhibit along the way, and how close those actions are to a conversion versus one another.
Visualizing where micro-conversions fit in the marketing funnel (Image from author, February 2025)The next section in your marketing plan should list micro-conversions within your customer funnel, including but not limited to:
- Add a product to cart.
- Sign up for email.
- Share onsite content.
- Download a sales or solution sheet.
- Initiate a chat.
- Engage with specific content (ratings/reviews, FAQs, etc.).
How Do We Know When A User Is Engaged?
Google Analytics 4 has an engagement rate metric, but it’s really just the inverse of bounce rate.
The problem with that: Just because a user didn’t bounce, it doesn’t mean they’re engaged per se. Couple that with the increase in the use of cookie banners, and you can see why it’s not the most telling metric.
The measurement plan is an opportunity to define custom measures of engagement that create a more rich, accurate understanding.
For example, users who toggle product configurations on the product page might be more likely to convert than those who simply visit a product page. But, if that micro-conversion isn’t tracked, that insight would go by the wayside.
The measurement plan documents custom engagements (of which there can be many), including any relevant items from this list of common events:
- Start a form.
- Toggle product configurations.
- View product images in carousel.
- Log into account.
- View a video.
Which Patterns Can We Use To Identify Valuable Groups Of Users?
Within the audience of people who visit your site, different segments will share different behaviors.
Some will be more valuable from a conversion standpoint, or may need unique pathing down the funnel.
To identify those segments and tailor marketing to their needs, we first have to map audiences to specific behaviors.
GA4 has some basic segments built in, such as audience by traffic source. However, creating your own audiences lends itself to more telling insights.
You can group users based on any number of conditions working together, allowing you to narrow the scope further.
In your measurement plan, focus on combinations of behavior that lend themselves to a deeper level of understanding. Here are some examples:
- Group purchasers by the number of site visits before purchase.
- Group engaged users by first session source.
- Group users by intent based on landing-page category.
Implementation Requirements
We’ve gathered information about how our site works and what we want to measure. Now, it’s time to lay out the details of implementing analytics and reporting functionality.
This final section of the measurement plan covers requirements like the platforms to use and the specific parameters that make it possible to track events.
With that said, it’s generally a good section for the data/analytics team to own.
Which Analytics Platforms Should We Use?
Collecting data is one thing. For that data to be useful for marketing & analytics stakeholders, they need to be able to access, manage, and share it.
Otherwise, they can’t dig in for insights or report performance to the team.
That’s where the analytics solution comes in. The most well-known is GA4, though alternative platforms like Heap and Matomo are also available.
Then, another layer down are complementary tools for more specific types of data, including tools for A/B testing, heat mapping, etc. They generally depend on the API of the primary analytics solution.
In the measurement plan, make sure to document:
- The primary analytics solution (GA4, Heap, Matomo, etc.).
- Supplementary analytics tools (CrazyEgg, Hotjar, Optimizely, etc.).
How Will We Create Dashboards For Other Stakeholders?
A business can’t expect every team member who benefits from reporting to run their own reports. Plus, that would get expensive quickly! Shared dashboards are essential for keeping everyone informed and streamlining the process.
A data visualization tool like Looker Studio lets marketing and analytics stakeholders create self-updating reporting with the most relevant measurements.
Add the following to your measurement plan: Dashboarding tools (Google Data Studio, Microsoft Power BI, etc.)
What’s Our Tag Management System?
The answer to this question is most commonly Google Tag Manager, but it’s still worth taking a moment to unpack tags at a high level. Plus, it’s worth noting that there are some alternatives to Google Tag Manager.
Tags are the code and fragments that make measurement possible. Using a tag manager, analysts can easily create tags and define trigger events.
Tags, triggers, and variables make up a container, which is usually implemented in collaboration with the dev team.
While a tag manager is optional, it’s extremely valuable for the safe, swift deployment of analytics changes and updates.
So, one more item for your document: Tag management system
How Do We Enable Custom Events?
We chatted about custom events earlier. Now, we need to map out the parameters that make it possible to capture those events in the analytics solution.
While GA4 has some default events available upon implementation, Heap and Matomo require “data chefs” to cook from scratch.
Either way, a business will inevitably have unique reporting needs that require customization, regardless of which analytics solution it uses.
Custom measures are set up in the tag manager and might require some configuration to get the right data output. That looks different from platform to platform.
List custom event parameters tailored to the specific requirements of the analytics solution, based on the documentation below:
Accurate Data + Strategic Alignment = Growth
A marketing measurement plan isn’t just a map for creating an analytics proficiency; it’s also a tool that can help make existing analytics more proficient.
In either case, it’s an opportunity to create alignment around what really matters and accurate reporting that works hard for everyone.
It’s time to create one for your business, following the steps above, with help from the right stakeholders.
Special thanks to Sam Torres, chief digital officer at Gray Dot Company and speaker at BrightonSEO, for her extensive contribution to this article. Her deep expertise in data strategy and digital marketing ensures the accuracy and relevance of the insights shared here.
More Resources:
- SEO ROI: How To Ensure Performance Tracking Matches Goals
- Which Metrics Matter In PPC?
- SEO Strategy: A Full Year Blueprint (+Template)
Featured Image: theromb/Shutterstock
