You’re all set to power up your business’s marketing efforts. But before you dive headfirst into your campaigns, have you taken stock of where you stand today?
It’s crucial to establish a benchmark of your current metrics – followers, engagement rates, web traffic, email list size, and more. Regularly monitoring these numbers enables you to assess the effectiveness of your marketing activities. After all, why invest time and money into strategies that aren’t yielding results? Unfortunately, many businesses overlook this step, opting to hit the ground running without a clear understanding of their metrics.
As a result, they find themselves unable to determine the success of their efforts down the line, often continuing ineffective marketing activities indefinitely. Consider lead magnets, for example. While creating compelling guides, checklists, and email landing pages may seem like a worthwhile endeavour, without knowledge of your existing email marketing list size, you’re unable to gauge the true impact of these efforts.
So, What Should I track?
Some of the most crucial metrics to track include: Website Traffic: Monitoring website traffic provides insights into the number of visitors your site receives, where they come from, and which pages they visit most frequently. This metric helps assess overall brand visibility and the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts.
Conversion Rate: Conversion rate measures the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a contact form, or subscribing to a newsletter. It indicates how well your website and marketing campaigns are performing in terms of driving user actions.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): CAC represents the average cost incurred to acquire a new customer. Calculating this metric helps businesses understand the efficiency of their marketing spend and identify areas for improvement in their customer acquisition strategies.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): CLV quantifies the total revenue generated by a customer over the entire duration of their relationship with your business. Understanding CLV helps businesses make informed decisions about resource allocation, customer retention strategies, and the value of acquiring new customers.
Return on Investment (ROI): ROI measures the profitability of marketing campaigns by comparing the revenue generated to the costs incurred. It provides insights into the effectiveness of different marketing channels and helps allocate resources to initiatives that yield the highest returns.
Social Media Engagement: Monitoring social media engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and follower growth rate helps businesses assess their brand’s presence and popularity on social platforms. Engagement metrics provide valuable feedback on the effectiveness of content and community-building efforts.
Email Marketing Performance: Key metrics for email marketing include open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and unsubscribe rate. These metrics help evaluate the success of email campaigns, segment effectiveness, and audience engagement.
Search Engine Rankings: Tracking your website’s search engine rankings for relevant keywords provides insights into your visibility and competitiveness in organic search results. Improving search rankings can lead to increased website traffic and brand exposure.
Customer Satisfaction and Feedback: Monitoring customer satisfaction through surveys, reviews, and feedback helps businesses understand their audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points. Positive feedback can indicate strong brand loyalty, while negative feedback presents opportunities for improvement.
Marketing Attribution: What marketing channels or touchpoints along the customer journey generated the enquiry? Do you know? By understanding how different channels contribute to conversions, businesses can optimise their marketing mix for maximum impact. Could your resources be better allocated elsewhere?
Our top tips?
- Dedicate just 10 minutes to documenting your current metrics every month. This simple exercise will serve as a valuable reference point moving forward, allowing you to accurately evaluate the success of your future marketing activities.
- If something is not working – work out quickly what to do. Don’t just leave it hoping it will get better.
- Display your numbers somewhere visibly – on a whiteboard, Trello board or simple printouts. Being visible focuses attention and gets stuff done!
- Add metrics to any monthly marketing meetings – spend 10 minutes only to review the stats.
Free Benchmarking Template
And if you’re eager to get started on benchmarking your metrics, we’re offering a FREE Benchmarking Template. Simply download your copy here:
Further Information:
Looking to take your marketing efforts to the next level? Consider joining our Marketing Masterclass Training Programme, where we’ll help you develop a comprehensive 12-month marketing plan complete with actionable insights.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or unsure of where to start, our team is here to help. Visit our Marketing Consultancy page or give us a call on 0115 8376 260 to learn more.
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