📈 How to measure Activation's ROI

How to track the ROI of Activation 📊

For an initiative to succeed, you must be able to measure its impact. The beauty of Activation lies in the variety of ways you can measure it.

The metrics you choose to measure in Activation should depend on:
🔮 The future vision you're trying to achieve
🚻 The people and organizations involved in the activation
🔄 The true indicators of momentum and change in the activation

For example: If you’re building a movement to get more people involved in biotech (shout out to Azade Hosseini who’s doing this at NYU!), ask yourself, “What does a successful outcome look like, and who's involved?”

While the number of participants is an obvious metric, it shouldn't be your only one. Here's how the metrics could change based on the future vision:

• A vision of biotech companies relocating to New York could be measured by revenue growth, job creation, and increases in local tax revenue resulting from the expanding biotech sector.

• A vision of growing the biotech movement could be measured by the formation of new biotech boards or collectives, tracking the number of community members who become advocates, and monitoring the trends they’re discussing online, in addition to standard metrics like revenue or the number of biotech companies.

☝🏽 Note: Your metrics should be both qualitative and quantitative—meaning that you collect verbal feedback and human observations, as well as data from automated and numerical methods.

🕵🏻‍♀️ In my work, I've identified more than 40 different metrics you can use in Activation.

To get your data-collecting juices flowing and give you a sense of how wide-ranging those 40 metrics are, I'll highlight just a few metrics below:

1. Engagement Rate: Percentage of stakeholders actively participating in events, initiatives, and discussions. Tracking this over time shows how momentum builds and sustains.

2. Advocacy & Influence: Number of community members or stakeholders who become advocates or ambassadors for your cause. This captures the depth of engagement and the network's power to drive further activation.

3. Content Sharing & Virality: How often content related to the initiative is shared, liked, or commented on. This indicates the organic reach and appeal of your Activation efforts.

4. Satisfaction & Feedback: Stakeholder satisfaction scores and feedback from surveys, interviews, or focus groups. This qualitative metric provides insights into people's feelings about their involvement and whether the Activation meets expectations.

5. New Customers, Prospects, or Leads: Number of new customers or leads generated directly from Activation efforts. This ties into revenue generation and the success of your Activation in driving business growth.

6. New User/Member Signups: If you have an existing community, this is the number of new users or members joining, reflecting the growth and appeal of the initiative. This helps track the expansion of your network and its influence.

7. Revenue Influenced by Activation Efforts: Increase in revenue directly attributed to Activation. This helps quantify the financial impact of your initiatives.

8. Behavior Change: Observable changes in stakeholder behavior, such as increased collaboration, adoption of new practices, or increased engagement. This measures the deeper, longer-term effects of Activation on individuals and organizations.

9. Partnership Quality & Depth: Strength and depth of partnerships formed through Activation efforts. This could include the number of collaborations, longevity of partnerships, and depth of joint initiatives.

10. Market Expansion: Increase in market reach resulting from building an engaged and activated community. This metric captures how Activation can open up new business opportunities and broaden influence in the marketplace.

The Impact of a Community on Growth

If my frequent mentions of "people," "stakeholders," "members," and the like are any indication, community is fundamental to Activation.

☝🏽 Note: An existing community is not required for Activation, nor do you always need to build a new community.

However, Activation does require ‘activating’ certain groups of people: whether that’s your customers, partners, suppliers, investors, or anyone else who is a stakeholder in the ecosystem you operate.

It's crucial to understand that leveraging a community can yield profound ROI. 🚀

While many people know and love communities in their various forms, they never really think about all the benefits of community; some benefits are explicit, while others are less obvious. Activating a community drives growth, influence, and profitability across multiple dimensions.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of this community ROI in the real world. 🔍

How Community Drives Growth

👉 Expands Market Reach: As your community grows, it naturally broadens your market by attracting more people who are aligned with your mission and values. This expansion increases your organization's visibility and influence within your industry or cause.

• Example: As Deskpass.com adds more workspaces to their network, this allows the company to market those spaces (and those cities / countries) to their existing clients. As those clients have teammates in that area, or as new clients sign up in that area, Deskpass expands its market presence through a larger community driving demand. 🌎

👉 Increases Brand Awareness: Active participation within your community raises awareness of your organization, mission, and future vision. Each interaction within the community amplifies your message, making your brand more recognizable and top-of-mind.

• Example: The Daily Drip hosts events that are well-attended and highly engaging, and features content from outside thought leaders, not just their own organization. Leaders Romi Wallach and Nicole Mastrangelo are constantly out in the community attending other organizations’ events and showing support for ALL women business owners, not just the ones in their community. Their value-add approach has always led others to ask, “How can I support you?”which leads to new The Daily Drip subscribers! 🔁

👉 Generates Leads and Accelerates Pipeline: Members of your community are potential leads. Their positive experiences within the community create trust and loyalty, which can quickly convert them from leads to customers. The engaged environment helps move these prospects through the sales funnel more efficiently.

• Example: A favorite (and very successful) example of mine is CMX by Bevy. Bevy hosts a variety of events and trainings for community management professionals, thus attracting and providing value to their exact customer. It’s working—the company is valued at $325M. Incredible work by Beth McIntyre and team! 🌟

👉 Builds Credibility and Trust: A thriving, well-managed community serves as social proof of your organization's credibility. When prospects see a vibrant community, they associate your organization with reliability and success, making them more likely to engage.

• Example: After participating in the inaugural Beyond Connections cohort of 60 people from 25 countries, I can seriously say that every single participant would give this community an A+ rating—and an A++ to its leaders Keith Ferrazzi and Ronen Olshansky. There’s been a flurry of independent posts from program participants raving about the impact Beyond Connections has had on them—myself included! 🏆

👉 Supports Sales by Addressing Objections: Insights gathered from the community provide valuable data that can be used to refine sales strategies. Sales teams can test approaches, gather feedback, and directly address concerns within the community, helping to overcome objections more effectively.

• Example: LEGO Ideas allows anyone to submit their own LEGO creations, and the community votes on their favorites. The most popular creations then become actual Lego sets! Each project requires 10,000 supporters to be considered, and anyone can vote. Discussions with designers drive product revisions, and conversations among fans foster a sense of community. LEGO Ideas allows the company to skip traditional market research and test a product without incurring actual development costs, gauging potential demand and refining concepts based on community feedback. Even unsuccessful projects provide valuable insights. LEGO Ideas sets consistently outperform regular sets; for example, the “Friends” Central Perk set generated millions in sales. 💡

Activation vs. Other Business Tactics

Finally, it’s important to know why Activation is different from anything else that’s out there.

You may be tempted to think of activation as a synonym for “transformation,” “strategic planning,” or any number of other familiar tactics, but it is a distinct approach. Let’s unpack some of the nuance. 👇

Activation vs. “Transformation”

• Focus: Activation centers on building momentum for a specific initiative, whereas transformation involves holistic changes across the entire organization, including culture, processes, and business models.

• Scope: Activation can be applied to both small and large-scale projects, whereas transformation typically affects the organization at its core.

• Process: Activation uses a phased approach to ensure buy-in and momentum, while transformation focuses on redesigning systems and structures for long-term impact.

Activation vs. “Change Management”

• Focus: Activation is about maintaining momentum and energy around a cause, while change management is about navigating through transitions smoothly and addressing resistance.

• Scope: Change management covers organizational shifts, while Activation hones in on specific initiatives and how to engage stakeholders effectively.

• Process: Activation is more dynamic and phased, while change management follows a structured path designed to mitigate disruption.

Activation vs. “Strategic Planning”

• Focus: Strategic planning lays out the vision and objectives, but Activation takes it a step further by driving the execution of that plan with high energy and engagement.

• Scope: Activation ensures that strategic plans are implemented with full stakeholder buy-in and momentum.

• Process: While strategic planning defines the roadmap, Activation pushes it forward, ensuring that all steps are executed with focus and consistency.

What I’ve loved recently:

🗣️ Jerry Seinfeld's 2024 Duke Commencement Address: As only Jerry can do, the comic turned a typically dry commencement speech into one that touts the importance of laughter all throughout life and prioritizing what’s important.

🎧 “2024 is the most significant time in human history” on “Masters of Scale”: Ari Wallach explains what a futurist really does, and why it’s crucial that we as humans focus on long-term impact rather than here and now.