In a recent study by the Fournaise Marketing Group, 69% of CEOs said they had given up on holding marketers accountable for KPI's and KPO's. Interestingly, “They confessed they would like to be able to work with business-focused, no-nonsense Marketers who are 100% ROI- and performance-driven – where they know every marketing dollar spent across all activities, channels and media is tracked and optimized to have a (proven) measurable, quantifiable and direct positive impact on the company’s P&L and operations, and where marketing wastage is minimized.”
Well marketers, I think that is a big enough sign for all of us that it is time to get down to business. The reputation of all marketers relies on it. If there is one New Year’s resolution to make this year and keep, it should be to prove your contributions to the growth of the company, which means you may have to get your head away from creative ads, dead-end promotions, and branding meetings. Fortunately, you can use a marketing software like HubSpot to hold yourself accountable in 2014 by tracking growth using these inbound marketing metrics:
Month over Month Growth
To calculate month over month growth, complete the following calculation for each of the above growth metrics:
(Month 2 – Month 1)/ Month 1 = MoM Growth
Then, use MoM growth to track each of the following metrics.
Reach
Ultimately, not growing your reach is a huge problem for you because you will not be able to focus on what really matters to the CEO, lead generation. Knowing your reach will help you show your CEO how much you are growing your network and focus on the things that matter most.
To track reach on HubSpot, use the Social Reach tool to determine your total reach for social media and add that to the number of email addresses in your database. Then, look at the MoM growth for each channel. Do you notice any trends in growth for a particular channel?
Visits
The total number of visits to your website tells you how your various marketing sources are performing. Growth in visitors is the metric that shows your content is successful. If you are growing the content on your website, the total number of visitors should be growing too.
Using the sources tool on HubSpot, determine the MoM growth for the total of all sources. Then, break it down by visits from organic search, email marketing, direct traffic, paid search, referrals, social media, offline sources, and other campaigns (custom tracking URLs you’ve created). A company blogging at least 3x a week can expect to see a 10-13% MoM traffic growth.
Lead Conversions
Tracking MoM growth on lead conversions in HubSpot can also be done using the sources tool. Once again, you will compare MoM growth for the total number of leads from all sources, and then you can break it down by the same channels as you did for visits. Your benchmark for lead conversion MoM growth should be 2% for overall site traffic.
Do you need help increasing lead conversions? Read Four Steps to Increased Lead Conversion
Customer Conversions
Ahh . . .finally, the cream of the crop in growth metrics, customer conversion. Customer conversion is important and becomes even more important to your CEO when you use that metric to calculate the revenue generated from customers in each marketing channel.
Although HubSpot doesn’t have revenue tied into the sources tool, you can easily track this by exporting your CRM data into a spreadsheet and stacking up the dollars next to your customer conversions, which are also captured on the sources tool like lead conversions are (if you have your CRM integrated with HubSpot). You can follow the same process with customer conversions as you did with lead conversions.
In 2014, you, I, and any other marketer who cares about our reputation have the opportunity to prove to CEOs that we can get down to business and provide the growth metrics to be accountable starting with the metrics shared in this post. If you have any growth metrics your CEO finds particularly important, please share them in the comments section!
