Marketing—good, strategic marketing—usually takes a while to show results. Search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and reputation management all have long timelines, and even quick-returning ads need refinement for the best ROI. Not only do these need to run, but you also need the ability to review their success and failures to readjust marketing and get your strategic goals back on track. This is the topic in the enVisioning Success podcast episode, Marketing Metrics: Measuring Success and Making Adjustments, and also this article. The work of making changes with marketing analytics isn’t the most glamorous side of marketing, but it’s critical to the marketing process on a strategic level.
Step 1: Get Data Collection in Place When Marketing Starts
As marketing strategy informs you which platforms you’ll use, you need to check them for analytics and document them for later use.
- Google Analytics is a must-have for your website. Many content management systems don’t have robust analytics baked in, and it’s hard to beat the data of Google Analytics.
- Know where the analytics are on other platforms. Almost all other platforms have analytics built into them. Know where they are and what can be shared via API (more on that below).
- Sooner is better. While you should have tracking code in place and eyes on data when marketing starts, having it before allows for a baseline to measure new marketing initiatives.
Step 2: Review the Marketing Analytics Regularly
Once you’ve got the data collection in place and have spooled up the marketing, you need to review the data regularly. What regularly means in your business will often depend on the speed of your sales cycle and the scale of your marketing. Tools can help make this information more digestible, such as analytics API collators and reporting apps (we currently use Swydo). Also, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) for review meetings allows you to focus the reviews constructively on a few easy-to-understand metrics.
Step 3: Make Changes Based on Good Information
It’s important not to obsess over a single marketing metric when reviewing and planning out your changes. Cost Per Click (CPC) might be an important part of advertising, but you’ll find it detrimental to only focus on that to the cost of conversions or clicks. Reviewing website traffic sources can show what marketing is driving traffic or open up potential new marketing venues. If certain marketing isn’t yielding results, you may need to revisit core parts of your strategic marketing and customer journey to make sure you’re targeting the right places for your customers.
About the enVisioning Success Podcast
This article is based on topics discussed in enVisioning Success, our weekly podcast hosted by Vision CEO Laura DiBenedetto and COO Julia Becker Collins. In it, they discuss all things business and marketing, from lead generation to leadership. Find us on PodBean to download from your platform of choice, or subscribe to our mailing list to get new episodes and other news delivered directly to your inbox. Interested in working with Vision? Learn more about our services and contact us today.
