The first step in determining whether your marketing efforts have been effective is to define your measures of success. For some businesses, success might come in the form of an expanded product line or new and diversified distribution channels. For others, it might be increased sales to new customers or an increase in the average sales per customer.
Set Marketing Goals
This is just as important as setting sales goals because both motivate the choices you make as a business owner. If you want to increase sales by 20 percent this year, which marketing strategies will help you achieve that? How will you reach other goals such as new products, customers or distribution channels?
Measure What Matters
Creating a definitive set of measures that align with your annual business goals can help propel you toward your revenue and profit targets.
Measure activities you can use to make decisions and take action in a way that make sense to you—in terms of numbers.
Use your defined measures to prioritize all requests and marketing activities over the coming year and to more accurately gauge the success of these efforts.
Sample Marketing Measures
- Distribution Channels: new markets, new customers, geographic reach.
- Online and Content Marketing: email opens, click-throughs, form conversions.
Measure – Public Relations
Craft a newsworthy pitch (unique selling point) that effectively targets the audience of the media outlet you want to reach. Calculate the “advertising equivalency” of coverage you obtain through PR efforts to the cost of paying for an ad to fill the same space/time.
Measure – Online Reputation
Endorsements, local listing site appearances, reviews (how many and what percentage favorable)
Measure – Media Buys
These include TV, radio and newspaper.
Cost per inquiry: How does traffic measure against the cost to generate it?
Conversion: What sales resulted from a targeted ad with a unique identifier?
