Looking for a way to formally measure the success of your marketing efforts? In this day and age, it is simply not enough to rely on gut feeling or intuition to determine how successful your marketing strategy has been. You need real, measurable data to determine what you are doing well and which areas need improvement.
Here are the marketing success metrics you should be tracking and measuring up against.
Lead generation is defined by HubSpot as “the process of attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest through nurturing, all with the end goal of turning them into a customer.” Generating leads is the ultimate goal for any marketing team, so it is essential to have measurable marketing metrics to gauge how successful your efforts are in this area.
Lead generation rate is the total number of leads captured, divided by the total number of visitors through a particular channel. This metric will give you an idea of which areas you may be excelling in and where you could have some room for improvement.
Cost per lead is a metric designed to measure the cost effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. It can be calculated by dividing the total cost of a certain campaign by the amount of leads that campaign has generated.
Cost per lead is a great way to gauge the effectiveness of your money being spent. It can allow you to identify areas in which you should keep spending or areas where it might be wiser to invest differently moving forward.
While measuring the effectiveness of leads is important, leads don’t always result in customers. You should also use metrics to get an overall sense of how your marketing efforts are impacting your company’s growth (i.e., revenue).
Return on marketing investment is measured by taking the total amount of revenue generated divided by the total amount invested in marketing in that given time. Marketing teams can use this metric to benchmark their success over a period of time in comparison to past time frames.
In addition to getting a general overall sense of how your marketing efforts are paying off, it is important to analyze how much you are technically spending per customer. You can learn where your money is best spent and get an idea of the amount of resources necessary to obtain a profit for any future campaigns.
Customer acquisition cost can be measured by taking any sales or marketing costs within a given campaign and dividing that number by the amount of new customers gained via that campaign.
Time on page is a great metric to measure to help you determine the success of your web design and content performance. If users are landing on your page but spending very little time on it, your website is not doing your business any favors. It’s time to reevaluate its layout, design, and the overall quality of content.
The longer your users spend on your page, the better. A high average “time on page” metric indicates the content your marketing team is producing is relevant, engaging, and of value to your audience.
Using metrics to determine marketing success is not only necessary to prove your ROI, but it’s also a valuable way to benchmark your performances and set attainable goals for the future. There are several other marketing metrics you should keep in mind and consider tracking, but the five listed above are a great place to start. In addition, check out SmartBug’s Marketing Spend Report & Metrics Calculator Template, a free-to-use tool that helps you showcase exactly where your budget is going and how much revenue you’re getting from each spend in marketing.