January is typically a time of year where we focus on the idea of a fresh start and a new beginning. I have received many emails over the last week offering me support on planning, goal setting and holding me accountable for my achievements in the year ahead. But before we start to set our strategy and plans (for those who follow me know I am a big fan of this), let’s start at the end with the marketing campaign metrics. A different approach I know but let’s start by what success looks like.
At the end of your next marketing campaign, what change in your business would you like to see?
For many this will seem like an odd place to begin, but actually it is quite logical. By having clear sight of what you would like the outcome to be, you put in place steps to achieve it and most importantly marketing campaign metrics to assess your achievements. I know that senior managers, in an ideal world, are looking for their teams to come up with highly creative marketing campaigns, but at the same time provide excellent data analysis of the results. I was lucky enough to attend a debate around the future talent within the marketing industry, with the CIM, some years back, at the Houses of Parliament, we concluded that this super hero did not exist.
But don’t worry, there is good news, as a small business owner there are steps which we can easily put in place to assess the performance of our next marketing campaign. Monitoring performance as you go through a campaign can also help you to react quickly to challenges such as abandon carts or gaps in your sales process. Some people may engage with the website get to a certain stage then drop off – spotting and reacting to this can make a big difference. Below I highlight the 7 key marketing campaign metrics to be focusing on for this year.
1. Revenue Generated
This is an obvious place to begin. Many who want to see growth in their organisation, plan a marketing campaign to help them archive that. Whilst the objective is not always about revenue generated, it could be around brand awareness or engagement, but generally there is a need to drive more revenue or growth within an organisation. When we track revenue we also need to consider our profit and the return on investment (ROI) we generate. Simply if we spend £100 and generate £500 into the business, this is a 5:1 ROI and for many would be a success.
2. Sales Leads
Of course a key part of your marketing campaign metrics to consider, will be the leads you generate. For example, if you plan to run a Linked In advertising campaign, you would look at the potential reach of your campaign and then how many people actually get in touch as a result of seeing your ad to find out more. You would hope that if they do get in touch then they are fairly interested in what you have been promoting. From this point it is then worth tracking them through to conversion. This may also throw up some areas where things are falling down in the sales process.
3. Website Traffic
When you start to change your approach and drive more enquiries, sales or interest into your business, generally this will impact on your website performance. Before you even begin on this journey, you need to make sure your website is up to date, reflective of your current proposition and from your research, has a high probability of engaging with your ideal client. Once you are happy with your on page messaging it is also worth checking out:
- Your domain authority eg: how do websites think you will rank from a search engine optimisation (SEO) perspective?
- How are your keywords ranking – tracking any change in their performance can be insightful during a campaign,
- The number of unique visitors to your website,
- And of course conversion levels.
You may also see some trends appearing, where potential customers go through your planned website customer journey but then don’t complete their purchase. Looking at why, is important to ensure your marketing campaign performance is optimised.
4. Cost per acquisition
This is a really important number to be aware of when you are planning your next marketing campaign. You can plan on what you wish to achieve but often it cannot be finalised until the end of the campaign. It is cited to be more expensive to acquire a new customer vs retaining an existing customer. So with this in mind we do need to consider if I invest £1,000 in a marketing campaign, how many customers am I likely to gain as a result of this? If you gain 10 or more, with a strong life time value, then it makes it worthwhile.
5. Lifetime customer value
Lifetime customer value or customer retention has to be the ultimate aim for any business, but is a long term metric. To acquire a customer who engages with your brand and then continues to engage with your service or buy your products over a number of years is worth a lot. In any marketing campaign, offering your existing customers something special first and treating them well, will definitely serve you in the long run. There are many examples where large businesses on the high street do not do this, offering their best deal to anyone new who wants to work with them. As a customer why would you remain loyal? Building loyalty programmes for a business of any size is definitely of value, businesses such as Boots or Tesco who offer fantastic loyalty programmes will certainly win in the long run.
6. Social Media Engagement
Done well, social media can provide a small business with a great route to market. Not only that, it is also fairly clear to see instantly if something is working by the number of followers, likes, engagement and sales which are generated. Whilst it rarely is more difficult in isolation, including social media as part of your marketing campaign can achieve great results.
7. Email Marketing Performance
As many of you know who follow me regularly, I am a huge fan of email marketing. Not only do you as the small business owner, own the data, but you also have control over it, plus you can also see the results fairly instantly. You generally see the impact of an email campaign within 4 hours of deployment and depending upon your business type an increase in revenue, accordingly. This tool is great for implementing “Abandon Cart” messages, answering common questions or engaging with your customer at key points in their journey. Done well this tool should absolutely be part of any future marketing campaigns.
In summary . . .
There are many things to consider above, keeping a constant eye on these metrics will help you to spot errors or problems early on. It is also worth noting that the success of a campaign is often not just down to the performance of the marketing activity. Depending upon whether you are a service or product based business will also alter which of the above marketing campaign metrics you use. Other things such as return on investment (ROI), sales funnels, brand awareness and business environment also may come into play, to influence the success of a campaign.
What the above has also highlighted is that for many businesses the marketing campaign and sales process are very intertwined and it is important to ensure both teams are working together to achieve the ultimate result for the business.
Keen to start to plan your next marketing campaign? Or set up your marketing strategy for the year ahead? Then please get in touch to arrange a no obligation discovery call.
