Here at Intergage we are big believers in measuring the success of your marketing, constantly reviewing and analysing the results. This then forms the basis of your forward planning.
We run comprehensive webinars on this subject, and have condensed this down to 10 top tips which you can follow within your business.
TIP 1: Set what your KPIs are being measured against
In order to measure effectively, you must have something to measure against: Think about both qualitative and quantitative Key Performance Indicators such as:
- Objectives linked to key business drivers
- Comparisons with previous year’s results
- Time based aims
- Consumption metrics such as how many people see a campaign
- Assign social media metrics
- Lead generation metrics such as how many leads are generated by one campaign
- Sales metrics such as how many actual sales are generated by a specific marketing channel
TIP 2: Use research to be prepared
Perform market research into your audience and competitors can give you a clear picture of where you should be in the marketplace. This then gives you something to measure against: For example, how you are positioned next to a competitor or the amount of market share you have. You can compare this 12 months later.
TIP 3: Understand why you are measuring
Once you and your entire team have a clear understanding of why you need to measure your marketing success, you will be able to encourage everyone to engage. Some of the core reasons for strong metrics are:
- Achieving a better understanding of your customers and their behaviour
- Mastering the marketing techniques that really work
- Being able to plan ahead
- Getting more ‘bang for your buck’
- Planning your budgets
- Reporting back to the Board
TIP 4: Test, test, test
How do you know a marketing campaign will work? The answer is in the pre-campaign testing. There are so many ways you can do this, from split testing one campaign against another and monitoring the response rates, to sampling, pre-launch test campaigns and mystery shopping.
TIP 5: Audit your marketing regularly
Just like the taxman, marketers need to regularly audit their marketing plan and channels. There are several elements you can audit on a quarterly or annual basis:
- Audit the brand to ensure it is being used effectively and consistently across the marketing and organisation
- SWOT analysis to monitor your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
- A Marketing Mix audit to ensure you have a strong blend across the different channels and online/offline
- A Product audit to check for the most profitable products and also a good blend of marketing across all of your products
- A marketing channel audit to verify the channel selection and the blend of multiple channel campaigns.
If you're unsure of the success of your current marketing efforts, why not join like-minded marketers from non-competitive industries at our upcoming event?
Keep an eye out for my next blog when I go through the remaining five tips.
