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Businesses that spend time and money on marketing will need to see whether their investments are producing the results they want. It’s important to set up a system to track marketing performance accurately.
Using the right approaches, you can gather data and develop insights that can help you come up with valuable insights and make better decisions. You can use these insights to craft great content, seek out new brand-building opportunities, and set new targets. If you are looking to enhance your marketing efforts and grow your brand in the long run, here are a few tips for tracking campaign performance.
1. Identify the targets that matter to your business
How do you define a successful marketing campaign? Is the number of sales conversions you get to generate every month? Does it involve getting the most lifetime value from every customer you convert? Every business has a unique set of targets to accomplish because they have different goals or objectives. With this in mind, you will need to know your goals based on the needs of your business.
If you want to increase your brand’s visibility, include brand impressions in your metrics. In case your goal is to generate more sales, you should be able to track the conversion rate as well as the cost per conversion. Knowing what to track will help you narrow down your targets and allow you to make improvements on areas in your campaign that have a major impact on your overall business goals.
2. Come up with a set of KPIs
Your business’s goals and objectives provide only a general view of the outcomes you want. If you want to make sure your marketing campaign is still on the right track, you will need to set key performance indicators or KPIs.
Setting KPIs is crucial to know where your marketing efforts are in relation to the goals you have set. They also help you identify minor issues that could get worse over time. By setting KPIs, you will be able to detect problems in real time so you will be able to modify your strategies or come up with new ones that support your goals.
There are several KPIs you can adopt to help you track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. You can start with tracking traffic acquisition per channel. This will help you determine if you are performing better using one channel than another.
Your KPIs should also include customer retention and lifetime value (the potential revenue you can gain from an existing customer) and traffic-to-lead ratio (the number of cold visitors that turn into warm leads). Your choice of KPIs will depend entirely on your business’s overall goals.
3. Use an analytics platform
The main challenge of tracking marketing performance is gathering raw data. Fortunately, much of the work can be easily done through a proper analytics tracking tool. In this case, you will need to set up a Google Analytics account if your business runs a website and sets up a paid advertising campaign.
When it comes to tracking your social media presence, you can turn to the analytics tools provided by the social media platform you are using. The Meta Business Suite, for instance, provides you with an all-in-one analytics tracking tool to measure the performance of your Facebook pages.
If you are looking to track all of your marketing KPIs, you may have to use a KPI dashboard software that gives you an easier way to create KPI reports, analyze marketing gains across various audience segments and platforms, and even measure the ROI of your campaign.
4. Measure your brand’s online market share
Considering the number of competitors you are facing, you will need to check whether your business is getting the attention it deserves. In addition to tracking the performance of your marketing campaign, you will also need to measure your brand’s share of voice. This metric shows how well your audience is familiar with your brand and offers insight into brand presence.
Companies are spending a lot of resources on brand-building because of its importance towards your lead generation and lead nurturing activities. However, with the number of messages that are generated each day, these brands will need to spend more than or at par with average marketing budgets in their industries. Focusing on your share of voice allows you to analyze your brand’s reach and see if you could look for better ways to make your business stand out.
Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaign involves gathering raw data, and knowing how you can turn these into information that could have a major impact on all your decisions. By following the right steps, you should be able to monitor your gains accurately and make changes that will take your business to where it needs to be.