Steps. Heart beats. Workouts. Sleep.
We love tracking our movements. But, if you’re anything like us, you love checking your daily data even more.
We know we aren’t the only ones anxiously refreshing our apps, looking to measure our progress. Are we close to closing our rings for the day? Will we hit our daily steps goal? Will this be the ride we break our PB?
And, when we’ve done well, we text snapshots to friends who’ll be ready to send a party popper🎉 to celebrate with us.
As much fun as all this is, data only matters if the points come together to help you achieve a specific set of goals. The same is true in marketing.
Set clear goals
Sales is the ultimate goal to measure marketing and business success. Sales, however, comes out of a series of marketing efforts that could include raising brand awareness and recognition, and increasing followers and website visits. Other goals could be to use content to generate quality leads, boost engagement, or increase customer value. There are plenty of others that could be added to this list.
The right marketing goals will depend on the nature and stage of your business. It will also depend on the goals the business has set for itself.
Measure the right marketing metrics
Marketing offers plenty of numbers to track. There are follows, likes, comments, subscribers, views, visits, downloads, bounce rates. We could go on, but the list will get overwhelmingly long. With all the data points available, it’s important to zero in on the marketing metrics that will help us more deeply understand what’s working and where we need to improve.
Such focus comes by identifying the marketing tactics that will support the specific marketing goals set, while also clarifying the specific outcomes each tactic should deliver.
Assess marketing metrics regularly
It’s easy to be impatient with marketing. We want our videos to go viral, we want people to immediately like our social posts and we want the sales to pour in. When this doesn’t happen, we think our marketing has failed.
Marketing needs time to breathe and build. Monthly, quarterly and half yearly assessments can provide a truer picture of your marketing progress. With longer lead times you can test tactics, spot the approaches that are delivering consistent results and identify what parts of a campaign are truly not working.
Want to know how you’re measuring up?
Looking at your specific marketing metrics will give you clear lines of sight into how well your marketing is serving your business. You’ll also want to assess how well your marketing function is set up to effectively deliver the success you’re hoping to achieve. Use our content marketing assessment tool to uncover the healthy marketing habits you can keep building on and which ones need to be adjusted to help you move your business where you want it to go.
