Marketing success can be a tricky thing to measure. Most businesses utilize many different tactics in their marketing strategy, so it can be difficult to determine how successful each tactic is.
The Internet has given marketers more platforms to utilize in their marketing campaign. Social media is gaining in popularity as a great way to promote your brand and engage your consumers. But if you’re not measuring the success of your marketing campaign well, then you really can’t be sure if your marketing efforts are doing any good.
It’s important that beyond the different marketing strategies you employ, you also need to make sure that you’re measuring the right thing. Here are some tips to help you ensure that you’re measuring your marketing success effectively.
1. Set goals from the start
Always begin with a measurement plan with specific goals and objectives before starting a marketing campaign. If you jump ahead without a concrete plan or goal, then how can you accurately measure the impact of your campaign? With a baseline, you can definitely see how your campaign is doing, if there really is an improvement over the original figures.
Ultimately, your success is defined by your objectives and goals. Your plan is to reach and exceed those goals, so you can know that your marketing is successful.
2. Make sure that you’re measuring the right thing
Your goals and objectives are what you should be measuring – if you cannot measure them, then it means that your goals and objectives aren’t defined properly. The right goal needs to be measurable, for example, “increase click through rate by 50%.” A bad objective would be, “run a successful promotional event.”
3. Find the right platform for your campaign
Just because everyone’s on Facebook or Twitter doesn’t mean that you can successfully launch a marketing campaign on those sites. You need to evaluate your target audience first – where exactly are they? Where are they most likely to be found? LinkedIn, for example, doesn’t get a lot of attention for being a good place to engage consumers, but some businesses may actually benefit more by using it than Facebook and Twitter. It all depends on who you’re targeting.
Once you’ve chosen a platform, it’s important that you know what you’re measuring. Go beyond the typical measurement of the number of followers and likes you have to the effectiveness of engaging your audience, building a relationship, and getting your sales up. When it comes to marketing, quality is always better than quantity.
4. Make sure you have a consistent implementation of your marketing strategy
Marketers today really have their hands full, so it’s important that their objectives don’t get lost in all the clutter so they can ensure a consistent implementation of their planned campaign. It would be difficult to measure the success of your campaign if your implementation of it is broken and inconsistent. Don’t just jump on a fad just because everyone else is doing it – make sure it fits well into your plan and objectives before adding another tactic to your campaign.
5. Evaluate regularly to see if the campaign is still effective
Some businesses enjoy sticking to what they know – they push out the same advertisements and marketing campaigns year after year just because they’re used to it, but they’re not really evaluating if these are successful. So it’s important to regularly evaluate the strategies you have in place if they’re still effective in achieving your goals.
6. Simple is sometimes better
Sometimes, measuring the simplest things are the best. The measurement of the effectiveness of your marketing campaign doesn’t have to be overly complicated. For example, when it comes to measuring a sales campaign, a good tactic would be to simply ask your prospects about how they discovered your products – this easily lets you know which among your marketing efforts was most effective in reaching them.
Truly, it’s not just important to have goals and objectives for measuring your marketing success. It’s also critical that you know what you’re measuring and that what you’re measuring is the right thing so that you can really see the effectiveness of your campaign.
Remember that in marketing, the quality of leads and prospects are much more valuable than the quantity. And don’t be too hasty to jump into the latest marketing tactics just because everyone’s doing it. Always ensure that you have a marketing plan in place as well as some baseline figures so that you can eventually evaluate the success of your marketing efforts.