How do you know what to change or improve if you don’t measure it?
The answer is you don’t! This is why data measurement and analysis is crucial to a successful inbound marketing strategy. Unfortunately some companies find this out the hard way and realize they should have been measuring their marketing efforts months and sometimes even years ago.
Regularly monitoring your data will help you:
- Identify what’s working
- Identify what’s not working
- Identify ways to improve
- Implement more of the tactics that work to improve marketing performance
S.M.A.R.T. Goals
The very first thing you want to do before anything else, is set SMART Goals. These are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Whether you’re a small 4-person business or a large 400 employee corporation, setting SMART goals is a crucial first step. These goals can be converted into key performance indicators (KPIs). Measuring and monitoring these KPIs will tell us two things: what’s working and where we can improve. Here’s an example:
Example Business Goal: Increase companies SEO presence
Example Inbound KPIs: Organic traffic, Search engine click through rate, Average SEO rank, etc.
What Are Some Things I Could Measure?
Brand Reach/ Engagement
It’s one thing to track how many followers you have on your social channels, but you should also think about things such as email subscribers and how many members your LinkedIn group has. Likewise, how engaged is your audience? How many Likes, Comments, Shares, etc. is your content getting? Is your audience interacting with your posts or is your content falling on deaf ears?
Lead Generation
What’s the point of having a lead generating website if you’re not tracking your leads? You should always track how many leads you’re receiving and where those leads are coming from. For example, you may find that a large percentage of your leads come from Facebook, so dedicating a larger portion of your time and/or budget toward Facebook may be worth looking into. Another metric to keep your eye on is lead conversion. Lead conversion is a great indicator of how your CTAs, landing pages and Opt-Ins are performing.
ROI
Return on Investment drives all major marketing decisions. If you are running an inbound marketing strategy and not tracking ROI you are doing your organization a disservice because inbound marketers who measure ROI are more than 12 times more likely to be generating a greater ROI as opposed to lower year-over-year return. Measure things like: average cost per lead (which is 61% less to outbound leads) and determine what source (Email, Organic, Referral, Social) provides the lowest cost per lead.
Determine what the best SMART Goals and Key Performance Indicators are for your business and consistently monitor and measure the results. Try to keep a daily or weekly eye on your metrics. Then, once a month or once a quarter take some time for data analysis. This is where you can start to identify what’s working, what’s not and possible recommendations moving forward.
When you are able to make changes and recommendations based on hard data, particularly ROI metrics, it not only gives you an extra boost in confidence in what you are recommending, but is a whole lot easier to sell when presenting to your CMO or CEO. One more important note, don’t be afraid to take some time to celebrate wins and achieving your goals!
