Test and control plan

Before we start let give a definition of marketing objectives.

 Marketing objectives according to Alexa are a brand's defined goals. They

outline the intentions of the marketing team, provide clear direction for team
members to follow, and offer information for executives to review and
support. Marketing objectives are a pivotal part of a marketing strategy.
Every company must set marketing objectives because they are very useful in order
to achieve its goal by having a motive. The objectives that they set should be
specific, measurable, agreed, realistic and time-bounded which is also known as
SMART.
Our goal and the thing that we try to do is to increase 10% up the sales of Bosch
power tools at the Grainger and this is why we set 3 research objectives. The
research objectives have to do with the following:

 Do the products that are being offered and displayed satisfy the need of our
customers? In other words, we have to influence consideration and Grainger
has to rely on the data that Google Analytics provides in order to examine the
behavior of the customers. To do so they should conduct a research. They
can also look for how many people visit Grainger.com from Boschtools.com.
 Do our sales efforts has wins as a result for our brand? In order to find it out
we should find out how our sales process can be improved. We can look that
by measuring the sales volume of Bosch power tools from Grainger.com
 Do consumers recognize and recall the brand? To be more specific, here we
have to look if the customers are aware that there is a Bosch power tool
section at Grainger.com. This is what we have to search and raise brand
awareness. This can happen by seeing how many people visit the Bosch
power tool category of Grainger.com.
To have more accurate insights as well as predictions of the campaign and the
results, what we have to do is to use an array of primary and secondary research
methods that include the collection of qualitative and quantitative data. So in the
first one we have to deal with new data but in the second one we use data that
have already be collected from previous researches.
Primary and secondary research:
Once again we will start with a definition for this 2 terms.

 According to Geopoll primary research is information gathered through self-

conducted research methods, while secondary research is information
gathered from previously conducted studies.
Secondary research is usually where most research begins. For this reason, we will
rely on secondary research as well as quantitative methods which are related to
statistical data form Google Analytics related with return on investment (ROI), return
on advertising spend (ROAS), and so on. In order to have more qualitative data it is
significant to use primary research tools such as conducting surveys and
questionnaires.
Grainger should adopt the following primary and secondary research:

 Google Analytics. From here they will collect structured data from which they
will see how consumers behaved before, during and after the campaign.
 Google alerts. By using this they will collect even more data from which they
will be able to see the brand sentiment
 Secondary data related to email marketing effectiveness such as open rate,
click through rate (CTR), conversional rate that can be considered
quantitative and secondary in type.
 Customers’ surveys and questionnaires. With that they will gather more
primary quantitative data about them.
 A/B multivariate tests and experimentations. Here they will have the chance
to collect more primary data in terms of their behavior.
Test and control plan:
There is already a model that we can use which is called Successive Approach
Model (SAM). In its test phase it is used in instructional design and it goes through 4
phases which are the decision proof, the alpha phase, the beta phase and the gold
phase.

 Decision proof: We should apply to a sample of customers the prototype of

the campaign in order to gauge their interactions, expectations and their
feedback. The decision proof should be send to everyone who is related from
stakeholders like designers, instructional designers, and digital marketers. All
of this along with related stakeholders which the decision proof is outside their
discipline can provide us data that is valuable for us.
 Alpha phase: When we receive the feedback from the decision proof and
modify what is necessary then we move on to the Alpha phase. In this phase
the campaign should contain all the elements which are necessary like
videos, rich media and other related assets.
 Beta phase: In the Beta phase the campaign should be fully-fledged as it
should be in the real world. Also the modifications who were suggested in the
Alpha stage should already be applied.
 Gold phase: The last phase, the Gold phase is the actual Launching of the
campaign. During this phase we should keep an eye on the key performance
indicator (KPI) which were agreed before so that it can adapt when it is
necessary.

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References:

 https://blog.alexa.com/marketing-objectives/
 https://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/goals-kpis/define-smart-
marketing-objectives/
 https://elearningindustry.com/sam-successive-approximation-model-for-rapid-
instructional-design
 https://www.alleninteractions.com/services/custom-learning/sam/elearning-
development