It used to be difficult, and in some ways, impossible to pinpoint what led to your success and failures in your marketing. You couldn’t tell what you were doing right or wrong, or whether you were investing your marketing spend in the right areas. Fortunately, that’s changed vastly over the years thanks to the surplus of technology you can use to measure your marketing. The question is what areas of your marketing need to be measured?
It’s easy to lay out a checklist of what any marketer might say are the most important metrics to measure. But the truth is no one can tell you which metrics are most relevant to your specific marketing department with your specific areas of expertise within your specific business. What we can provide are ways to figure out which metrics are most valuable for you.
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How to Pinpoint Your Most Valuable Metrics
- Track Backwards from a Sale
How close does your marketing get to a sale? Those last touchpoints where a prospect interacts with your marketing are vital to reaching a sale. So start from the most vital touchpoint and track backward. Focusing on the last three touchpoints, let’s take a look at an example of how a prospect could interact with your marketing:
A prospect looking for a piece of construction equipment visits your website and browses your inventory. The prospect signs up for your newsletter which makes their email address available to you. You send a follow-up email and by clicking on a link in the email, the prospect is led to a form they fill out and becomes a lead.
So tracking backward. . .
- Establish KPIs
Determine what goal you’re trying to reach with each touchpoint and what Key Performance Indicator (KPI) best indicates that you’re headed toward or not hitting that goal. For instance:
- Don’t Forget the Buyer’s Journey
No matter what marketing goals you set, these goals are heavily influenced by prospect behavior. One way to gauge that behavior is by determining where your prospects are in the buyer’s journey.
Once you determine where they are, you can set goals that align to each phase and establish a KPI for each goal. Remember to track backward from a sale. In this case, it will be the closest point to when a prospect makes a purchase, the decision phase. Here’s an example of what this would look like:
You may be thinking it’s alright to measure exactly what other marketers measure and there is some truth to that. Metrics like number of leads and ROI are valuable not only to marketing departments but to many businesses. So by all means, don’t ignore these basic metrics. Still, there are those metrics that reveal how successful your specific marketing strategies are that may not be so telling for others. By tracking backward from a sale, establishing KPIs, and factoring in the buyer’s journey, you can determine what metrics are best for you.
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