When it comes to showing that your company is worth investing in and doing business with, marketing metrics are everything.
If you’ve ever watched an episode of Dragons’ Den then you know that most investors have a “show me the numbers” mindset. When you have solid measurements that prove the success of your company in a quantifiable manner, there’s no way anyone can try to downplay your past achievements or doubt the future projections that you’re setting forth.
Conversely, if you don’t have any solid statistics in hand, you’ll be lacking the evidence needed to prove the results of your hard work. Once you understand the importance of metrics and start to analyse them retrospectively on a routine basis, your entire management process will become about optimising those stats and squeezing out every possible percentage point of improvement with gradual adjustments and acquisitions. To help you achieve that goal, here are seven ways you can boost essential marketing metrics in any industry:
1. Track Key Performance Indicators
A key performance indicator (KPI) is an industry term that is commonly used to describe the most essential marketing metrics. Within the broad scope of all measurements that can be taken to quantify a company’s financial success, popularity, and aesthetic appeal, there are really only about 5-10 truly pivotal statistics that every company should be tracking and working to improve.
While the exact name of each metric will vary depending on your business model, the most important KPIs to track are those related to profitability, site traffic, social following, investor ROI, and business growth. You can use QuickScore from Intrafocus to track every critical KPI within a comprehensive interface that allows for 5-star business reporting & analytics.
Likewise, they provide a range of other software that help business owners focus intently on very specific aspects of company management and progress. If you aren’t yet monitoring performance, this is the perfect place to start.
2. Study Conversion Rate Optimisation
Any business that is able to achieve a high conversion rate (CVR) can become tremendously profitable if other factors like pricing and service quality are also up to par. The conversion rate is the number of potential leads who wind up converting into customers, clients, or subscribers. Essentially, it is the percentage of people who saw your ad or site and then performed the action that you wanted them to perform. Studying CVR optimisation is a step that every marketer or entrepreneur should take.
3. Use Split Testing Techniques
Split testing, also sometimes referred to as A/B testing, is the process of running two identical or highly similar campaigns or making two distinct adjustments within a single campaign and comparing the results to see which approach works better. For example, you’d make SEO adjustments to two different pages on your site and see which page wound up receiving more search engine traffic.
4. Practice Retargeting
Retargeting takes advantage of what you already know about your existing customer/subscriber base and uses that information to help you determine which leads and audiences you should pursue next. This is one of the best ways to increase conversions and other crucial KPIs.
5. Build a List of Email Contacts
The larger your list of targeted emails, the more primed leads you’ll be able to reach out to in an instant with mass marketing emails. Study list building and you’ll definitely see a measurable return.
6. Expand Your Social Following
This tip is very straightforward but worthwhile nonetheless: increasing the number of followers and friends your company has on social media will directly increase awareness, engagement, sales and other essential marketing metrics.
7. Utilise Consultations and Courses
Finally, you can greatly enhance your understanding of KPI tracking, analytics, and other advance marketing concepts by consulting with experts and completing online courses. This approach is often preferable over pursuing a marketing degree because you can learn as you go along and apply what you’re learning immediately within the context of your current business endeavour.
Most Metrics Can Be Improved Upon Initially
The fact is, the vast majority of metrics that are assessed at the beginning of a performance campaign can be improved upon. As the campaign progresses and you’ve already implemented most of the improvements that you could think of, finding new ways to achieve additional gains will become increasingly difficult. By applying the techniques mentioned above, you could see initial gains in the range of 10 to 50 percent or more in each KPI.
However, as you begin to approach a plateau or point of peak performance within each category, the gains will be smaller. Eventually, large corporations get to the point where they have thousands of people working full-time positions only to improve a single metric by 1 to 10 percent. While results will always vary, if you haven’t starting tracking and optimising KPI’s yet, there’s a good chance you’ll see significant success in the first 1-6 months of heeding the tips in this guide.
