How do you keep score of your marketing activities?
I thought I’d share some of the
strategic framework and questions I ask and to suggest an
approach that might be helpful to others. The questions below are specifically
focused on global website, social media and outbound marketing campaigns through
email marketing.
What is your overarching
objective?
This question is about the big frame of reference that shapes why
you are doing this type of work. If you can pick only one thing, are you
looking to educate an audience, raise awareness of your offering, generate
leads, convert visitors, etc. What is
your big picture goal that you can filter all of your work through? This is a
great place to start and make sure everyone is aligned.
How will you measure growth
and engagement?
Key performance Indicators (KPI's) help guide that
you are achieving the results you set out to gain. They are simple numerical expressions of a critical indicator. Our traffic is up 7%, our visitors are staying 22% longer or we have doubled new visitors to the site.
If you want to expand your influence by
reaching more people in your target audience, you’ll want to measure the number
of visitors who might come to learn more about who you are and what you
do. I like to track growth rate of
visitors X the amount of time spent on our site. It’s an approximation of their
engagement with us and the opportunity for us to educate the visitor. This can
be tracked through Google Analytics and is a nice clean statistic we can view
monthly.
Are we reaching new
visitors?
I also want to see if we are growing by reaching new
visitors too since our goal is to expand our reach deeper and more broadly into
our market. Can we track first time
visitors and see how that is trending? And, are these new visitors staying on
the site and going to important educational places we have designed? So we need a clear way to track this trend
which might be rate of growth of new visitors and we can compare the time on
site versus returning visitors.
What are visitors
interested in and what isn't working?
We spend a lot of time developing content and want to make
sure we are providing content that is useful and seen by most visitors. If we have pages without traffic, maybe they aren't well designed, the content isn't interesting or perhaps we have a
navigation issue.
Sign Up Means Deeper
Engagement
Visitors who come to our site and sign up to receive our
blog or some of our newsletters are raising their hands saying they are very
interested in what we have to share. Number of sign ups is a key metric but
needs to be carefully considered because you may have many readers who just don’t
want to sign up for blogs through email distribution. I see that on my personal blog (that you are
reading right now) and I recognize that many people read my posts elsewhere –
and that’s okay. Still, you do want to see some sign of growth or trend that
shows you are providing content of value.
Where are the
visitors coming from?
Both social media and outbound email marketing campaigns
will drive traffic to your site as you promote blog posts, video, whiteboard
animation and other interesting content.
You can add to these metrics a ‘source of traffic’. If most of your blog subscribers are coming
from reading posts on your Facebook page and end up on your site, then perhaps
more energy and effort is needed to take advantage of this approach. If certain email campaigns are driving new
users to the site, this too can help shed a light on how you might consider
growing this communications mindful that you don’t want to wear out your
permission to communicate.
The Scorecard
Turning the activity into a simple scorecard is the best way
to monitor and share with your team and interested colleagues who want to
understand why you are doing. When your CFO asks, how you know this social
media stuff is worth the time, you’ll have some data to support your
actions. Of course the data is never
perfect and marketing tends to get measured in ways that other teams get a
pass. (When was the last time you had a CFO ask to see an ROI on sales calls?)
The scorecard should be for the marketing team
to keep adjusting the site, fine tuning your message and help determine where to invest in
content creation for your site. Digital is dynamic and you need to keep improving and evolving too. And if you are achieving your goals, there is
nothing wrong with a little celebration.
You wouldn't play a game like baseball or tennis without
keeping score. Marketing demands that same level of rigor so you know if you
are making progress. But keep it simple and essential.
Don't hide behind data, let it shine a light on trends and don't be afraid to share the score.
Cartoon courtesy of Tom Fishburne
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Need help figuring out how to keep score. Connect with me on Clarity and I'll be happy to work with you. It is easy to schedule a brief call at your convenience.
Jeffrey Slater
MomentSlater
Labels: digital metrics, Google analytics, marketing metrics, Marketing Moments, Marketing scorecard, measuring marketing, ROI, Scoreboard