Key Measures of Marketing Success

As a modern marketer and strategic decision maker, you would always be looking for measuring your success with respect to your campaign objectives. Not every campaign directly leads to dollars and cents. Some campaigns raise awareness of your brand, while others might bring visitors to your blog – both help increase profits in the long run, but short-term results can’t be quantified with monetary values. It raises an important question of “how do you know whether your digital marketing efforts are successful?”. It starts with choosing the right metrics (often called Key Performance Indicators, or KPI) based on the goal of your marketing campaign.

Few KPIs you can’t avoid measuring –

1. Total Number of Web Visits by sources and channels

A comparative analysis of the number of visits monthly, quarterly and annually will give you an idea of how effectively your campaigns are driving traffic. This number should grow steadily over time; if it drops month to month, it’s time to take a hard look at your marketing channels to identify the problem. Ideally, google analytics or your existing marketing automation tool should reflect the report based on channels/ sources, region, demographics and other parameters like –

– Number of New Visitors versus –     Number of Return Visitors
– Interactions Per Visit
– Bounce Rate
– Time on Site
– Conversions etc.

Also, there are many connectors and API available in the market to help you sync all the data and configure flexible workflow. Make sure you measure all the KPIs against your goal set at the beginning. While your data is stuck in silos and peripheral systems it’s essential to connect all the lead sources to your existing marketing automation system to fetch the right and authentic reports.

2. Conversions

Conversions occur when visitors or customers take specific actions as a result of your digital marketing. Unlike website behavior, conversions are more directly linked to sales and revenues. Since your ultimate goal is increasing profits, it is absolutely essential to make sure on your digital marketing conventions.

2.1. Cost Per Conversion

It is imperative to know the cost of customer acquisition and cost per lead conversion. For example, if you are investing in any form of advertising that has an ad spend, you’ll want to know how much you’re paying per lead that is generated. 

It helps if you have a good understanding of what a lead is worth to you (simple calculation: close rate x average sale price = value of a single lead) so you can determine if the investment is worth the return. If you’re paying $100 per lead and they’re only worth $75, you need to make some changes to your strategy. If you are not able to get these visibilities through out-of-box reports and dashboards, you may look for a marketing technology consultant to help you build custom reports and dashboards.

2.2. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring allows you to assign a value to your leads automatically (this is where the use of a CRM comes in). That’s right, there isn’t any manual work involved once you’ve set it up.

You’ve probably guessed by now that the value of a lead doesn’t stay constant over time. Most lead scoring systems have a 100-point scoring model. A lead that has a score of 90 today, for example, isn’t necessarily going to be as valuable a week or two later, depending on your nurturing process and whether you’ve reached out to them.

Moreover, you can prioritize the leads using artificial intelligence or predictive lead scoring in place. For example, Salesforce Einstein Lead Scoring analyzes all standard and custom fields attached to the Lead object, then tries different predictive models like Logistic Regression, Random Forests, and Naive Bayes.

3. Revenue

For B2B it may not be essential to measure revenue but it’s imperative for an online store and e-commerce business. You’ll want to monitor your site’s revenue trends to ensure your marketing efforts are leading to more sales. Beyond just total revenue, you should be monitoring your margin on those sales (something that you’ll have to do outside of an Analytics platform like Google Analytics) and compare that to your costs, both internally and with your marketing and advertising efforts. Few revenue metrics are –

3.1. Average Order Value

Your site’s average order value shows the revenue generated by a single on-site purchase on average. While this is usually impacted more by your site than any marketing efforts, it’s still worth keeping an eye on to make sure that your efforts aren’t driving traffic that leads to transactions with a below average order value.

3.2. Return on Investment (Real and Projected)

This is the ultimate measure of your marketing success: Are your marketing technologies and efforts profitable and delivering results to your bottom line? Here’s where your lead-to-close ratio comes into play to help keep you on track. If you’re spending $25 per lead and your closing rate is 25 percent, it costs you $100 to acquire a new customer. If your average customer value exceeds that amount, you’re in the dark on projected marketing ROI.

Your marketing dashboards’ success largely depends on the deployment process. It is always advisable to consult with a marketing technology partner to ensure your marketing data is organized and dashboards are positioned for maximum effect. Use a structured process to deploy dashboards to ensure they are adopted by those who need them.