Measuring Your Marketing Success
We all seek confirmation on what we are doing and sometimes approval too, from what we are wearing, to what decisions to make, to what we are doing in our businesses and where we should go on holiday. How do we get this confirmation and recognition as to whether what we are doing is working or not?
We measure! We look at the facts and figures to gauge success.
What to measure in your marketing
As in the stats, the analytics, numbers, such figures to include and measure when reviewing your marketing are:
Google Analytics (users, sessions, hand time on pages, keywords used to find the site, bounce rate, sources of traffic to the site, which pages are popular, and which are not etc).
Social media profiles (stats per each profile) – likes, followers, reach, engagement, impressions etc.
Email marketing – numbers on the database, send rate, open rate, click through rate etc.
And of course, measure your leads – how many do you have and where do these come from?
Knowing your lead sources eg where your leads come from is vital for a few reasons. Firstly, to gauge the success of partnerships and referrals that you have in place. Collaborations and referrals can work wonders as a lead source for your business, they are for me for sure. Secondly to work out what is or isn’t working for you campaign wise and thirdly so you know where to place your limited budget and time marketing wise.
Plus, and this will vary depending on what marketing channels you use to market and sell your business, you may want to measure SEO activity, number of blogs, sales calls, networking events, advertising clicks, online directory listings, membership or subscription numbers and so on.
Why measure your marketing
You will want to cross check the numbers you are measuring against your goals and KPI’s so you can gauge progress. So what are the other benefits to measuring your marketing and sales activity?
Knowing the numbers and facts will enable you to make informed decisions, and not rely on guesswork as to what marketing to implement, when, where and how.
You can see what is working and what isn’t, so you can plough time and money into the best channels as opposed to covering them all in a tick box way.
You can ensure you don’t lose focus and stay on track. And stop procrastinating and taking no action
And finally, you can use such a report to keep yourself and your team (internal or outsourced based) accountable and focussed
What to do with these statistics and findings
The numbers and graphs should mainly be used for making improvements in your business eg improvements in what you do or who does it or how much time and money you spend on it. As said before, you can use the reports to see what is working and what isn’t and then be able to, with confidence, determine/ramp up/cut back on certain activities and channels and use your limited resources in the right and most appropriate way.
Then finally, you double down on what is working within your marketing.
Measuring gauges success and ROI, but it isn’t to be used for comparison and for vanity. Measure like for like and don’t forget to reward the effort as well as the results.
“Do not measure success by today’s harvest. Measure success by the seeds you plant today” – Robert Louis Stevenson.
When should you measure?
Now you know what to measure, how can you do it? My recommendation is to firstly do this before any marketing commences, so you have a benchmark or stats to compare to further down the line.
Then measure regularly eg monthly or quarterly. Monthly would be better so you can take any action swiftly where needed and to maintain the momentum. How you measure can be recorded in a simple spreadsheet or an advance spreadsheet or via your CRM system or via online software and apps. The aim is for as much as possible data entry and analysis wise to be automated and calculate/populated. The measuring and outcome of the results can be numbers based or visual or both.
And finally, measure/summarise at the end of a campaign or retainer contract.
Further information
As a successful marketer, with experience in agencies and inhouse, Nicole Martin and her marketing agency specialise in creating/implementing marketing strategies and plans for B2B professional service businesses. Then supporting the business owner to not only have a plan but to implement it via outsourced marketing and with accountability and introductions to her network too.
Nicole helps businesses to grow from where the business is now to where they want to be, without overwhelm.
Nicole Martin, FCIM - Pinpoint Marketing Consultancy Ltd