To measure is to know. This motto applies to almost everything and certainly also to marketing results. Measuring results is not only important to determine the ROI of your campaigns, you can also use the results to improve future campaigns. Even more important than the measuring of results, is measuring results the right way. If you don’t measure marketing results in a good way, you create false security. You get a wrongful impression that you’re on the right track. Or, the other way around, you spend a lot of additional money on a campaign assuming the results are not as good as expected, while in practice you are well on your way. And that is unnecessary!
Avoid these pitfalls
Often, different companies make the same mistakes when measuring their marketing results. So, if you want to create the correct insight in the results of your marketing campaign? Avoid the following pitfalls:
Pitfall 1: Measuring without involving general marketing goals within your company
You can say little about general marketing results if you do not involve the business goals for your company. If the goal of your organization is to get more customers in the insurance sector, make sure that you measure how many interactions you have with insurers. If you measure only the number of registrations for your newsletter, you may be dissatisfied with ten new registrations. However, if eight of those registrations come from people who work at insurance companies, you might have a different feeling regarding the success of your campaign.
Pitfall 2: Take figures for granted
Sometimes figures can paint you a wrong picture. Let’s assume your company has an infographic designed by a designer. The infographic is shared on social media and via Facebook, you measure a lot of clicks. At the same time, the conversion from Facebook-clicks to registrations for your webinar is very low. What turns out to be the case? The designer was proud of his infographic and has shared it on many places of Facebook. The people who have looked at your infographic are not your potential customers, but potential customers of the designer.
In short, the measurement results of your campaigns do not always paint the right picture. Sometimes there is interference on the line. In this case, it may be better to ignore certain figures since you can’t come to valid conclusions based on the data.
Pitfall 3: Not measuring the complete sales funnel
Many companies only measure the beginning of their sales funnel. What is the click through ratio on Google? How many visitors visit the website? The next steps in the process are just as important. For example, it is important to know how many visitors convert into sales qualified leads (SQL) or customer. If the conversion to SQL is low, this can indicate that the campaign is not properly aiming for the target group. When conversion is very high, while the number of clicks is low, then the campaign was well targeted.
Pitfall 4: Measuring only quantitative results
It is tempting to just measure data with a direct result attached. Conversions, subscriptions, followers, likes, clicks and so on. However, many indirect/softer indicators are also important to determine the success of your marketing campaign. For instance, if it appears that visitors spend a lot of time on your website, then it probably means the find your content to be of interest. Another example, if you have a nice test on your page, it’s important to know how many people finish this test.
Pitfall 5: measure without a benchmark
Let’s assume you just posted your third e-book online. You run your metrics and you find out that this e-book is downloaded three hundred times. The LinkedIn-post about the e-book has gained two hundred times an ‘interesting’ remark and is shared three times. Ultimately there will be 10 SQL’s because of this campaign and five of them will actually become a customer.
What do these numbers mean? Unfortunately, nothing at all! There is nothing to compare these metrics with. You need comparison material in the form of a benchmark. That’s the only way to determine how successful a campaign actually is. Of course, it takes a while before you have benchmark material, but after a few campaigns you should have enough data to make a reliable comparison.
A benchmark has more advantages. You can not only make a comparison with your previous campaigns, you can also say something about the results of your marketing campaign in the event of an interference.
Pitfall 6: forget to measure the human factor
There is qualitative and quantitative information that you gain online. But not every aspect of marketing is measurable online. Some metrics, such as brand recognition you need to measure offline. To benchmark such offline results, you could perform a baseline measurement. After a number of campaigns, you measure whether the brand awareness has increased.
Also during the sales processes, you gain a great deal of knowledge about the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns when using the human factor. A potential customer tells you that he thinks the e-book issued by your company is very valuable. Or you hear a sentence like: “Gee, I did not know that you did these activities as well. This type of information is just as valuable as the hard-online figures.
Pitfall 7: Only measuring results with potential customers
It is tempting to focus the measurement of your marketing results on new customers. In that case you just have to measure data based on the number of new registrations and interpret the results by the number of new customers that you end up with after a campaign.
Of course, this information is very important. However, don’t forget that there is often still space for selling addition products or services to existing customers. Often it is even more easy to sell more to your existing customers than to create an entirely new customer. So be sure not to forget the interest of the existing customers: there you already have a foot in the door!
To measure right is to know right
That it’s important to measure the results of your marketing campaigns is beyond dispute. However, this must be done well to know if you’re looking at the trunk or the tail of the elephant. So, you must measure your results along the whole funnel. Pair your marketing results with the business goals and make sure you have benchmarks to make the appropriate comparison. In addition, don’t limit yourself to the hard figures on your metrics dashboards. Also pay attention to qualitative information and data collected offline.
By doing so you provide yourself a total overview of the results of your marketing campaign. You see not only your ROI and how much you are selling, but you also present yourself a treasure of information on how to improve your future campaigns. This is the only way you can ensure that next time your campaigns will be more effective.
