Every single marketer and communicator has been there. You wrap up your carefully crafted marketing campaign pitch and it’s written across your boss’s face. Those three letters: R. O. I.
Marketers know that the true value of exposure and storytelling is difficult to quantify to say the least. Our friends in other disciplines require more proof than the incalculable and intrinsic benefits we intuitively know to be true.
Marketing has traditionally had to rely upon unquantifiable metrics to determine their success. They may have known that 5 million people watched an advertisement, and that there was a 5% increase in brand recognition afterward. Sales increased as well, but it was difficult, if not impossible, to prove causation rather than correlation.
Increasingly, employers are demanding that marketers prove causation. There are a number of products on the market that offer analytics tracking. You’ve likely heard of Google Analytics, which has been around for a while. Social media sites typically offer some form of metrics to determine how effective your post was. But how can you separate the metrics that matter from the ones that don’t?
Here’s a handy list of metrics you should be focusing on to prove your marketing strategy’s success:
- What channels are driving conversions? If you’re getting 10x more likes on Facebook than Twitter, but all your conversions are coming from your Twitter link, invest in that. Likes don’t mean anything without purchases behind them.
- Who is coming to your site? And who is actually buying once there? If you’re targeting 19-24 year old males, and they are coming in droves to your website but not actually buying anything, you might be targeting the wrong audience. Learn more about how to target the right audience in our post, Developing Buyer Personas.
- What are people doing once they get on your site? If you find that people continually leave the site after going to the “About Us” page, or are putting lots of items in the cart without actually buying anything, try to determine what it is about those pages that is turning people away.
- What conversions are driving revenue? If everyone coming to your site is focusing on your least cost-effective items, it might be worthwhile to change up your marketing targets to attract those who might be better buyers.
- Who is buying multiple times? If 19-24 year old males typically buy one item and never return to your site, but 25-30 year old males buy your products repeatedly, focus on the older demographic. If your product is good, it’s easier to market to current customers than new potential customers.
Learn more about how ROOT3 Marketing and Business Development works with clients.
