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Whichever way you spin it, far too many marketers get caught up chasing relatively unimportant metrics. I don’t care if you’ve grown your website from one million to four million visitors, how has it impacted your bottom line?
Profit is, and will always be, the most important metric for any business – online or offline. Profit gives you sanity.
Despite profit’s underlying importance, it isn’t the only business metric worth tracking. After all, you can interpret a lot about the state of your business from a wide range of metrics.
Today, I want to cut through the unimportant metrics and straight to the good stuff: six on-site metrics that all online businesses should be tracking. I’ll also be providing some quick tips on how to improve your performance for each one....
Analytical tools can get you the feel good numbers, but they’re also about more than that. They’re about incisive, actionable data that gives reliable feedback on your current campaigns and practical insights to inform your next one. Marketers who think they’ll only get ‘soft’ metrics out of the data either haven’t been using powerful enough analytics tools, or they haven’t been using them properly. Social media isn’t a baby anymore, it has grown into a vital channel with powerful analytics available that can help you find the money amongst the noise.
Intelligent use of social analytical tools means that there is absolutely nowhere for substandard marketing campaigns to hide. Spending on social analytics is expected to grow from $620 million in 2014 to $2.73 billion by 2019.
With a few clicks you can get all the lowdown on how your campaign is performing online, what’s making you the most money, and how to change it if necessary. The best marketers will use this information to streak ahead of their competition with campaigns that are on trend, responsive, and deftly efficient at delivering results that their CFOs cannot ignore. Here’s how you can join them....
In a post last week, I talked about turning your content marketing upside down and focusing first on what behaviors you want your content consumers to perform.
Once you’ve done that and created content that you think will drive the desired actions, you can start measuring the efficacy of your content program.
Content cannot be measured with a single metric, because no one data point can successfully or satisfactorily tell you whether your program is working. Instead, you need to create an array of metrics that are selected from four primary buckets....
Month after month there’s increasing data showing us that marketing people don’t plan or measure enough. Our own Smart Insights survey broadcast to 40,000 marketers saw 69% admitting that there is no digital marketing strategy in their current role. It’s the same story here where only 46% have a content marketing strategy and this in-depth McKinsey study.
It appears that we’re quick to dive into solutions, new techniques, tactics and channels – but we lack the over-arching strategic thinking necessary to optimize for success. The good news is, this is a choice, and we can make different choices.
CEOs don't trust marketing Worse, a recent survey by Fournaise Group in London highlights that senior executives don’t believe the marketing function demonstrates objective commercial thinking, with 73% of CEOs stating “marketers lack business credibility and the ability to generate sufficient growth”. 80% of CEOs simply don’t trust marketers at all, while 91% do trust CIOs and CFOs. Ouch. Though is it a surprise if the marketing function is, in some volume, admitting it lacks the necessary plans and strategy?...
The key to the marketer's success is to focus on the needs of the customer and the benefits that can be delivered, according to a new report from Forrester.
"Focusing on consumer needs is a healthy first principle that will engender success and avoid technology-led strategies," said Forrester Analyst Anthony Mullen in a release.
Marketers must pivot their strategy from a channel-based to a needs-based approach. This will ensure that marketers focus on the benefits they can bring customers and will avoid the problem of new technologies shaping strategies too early in the process.
Mullen outlines seven steps to a needs-based marketing strategy, suggesting replacement of the concept that brand strategies are driven by how marketers can meet their own objectives with the idea that consumers' needs must drive the approach....
If it's all about the customer, why do companies struggle to make them the center of the brand experience? Probably because they're treating their customers like they're all worth the same amount of time and money...
The topic of customer centricity is not new. In the past few months we've covered how to create a customer-centric culture and examined the difficulty in achieving it. And now thanks to the folks at Monetate, there's a handy guide to help us understand what being customer centric really means.
It doesn't mean being focused on the average customer. Rather it means looking at the lifetime value of each customer to figure out how to market exclusively to their worth. But not surprisingly, not many brands know how much their customers are worth. If they did, they'd see that not many of their customers are worth much — meaning that many are not completely committed to your product and as such can be easily swayed by discounts, deals and promotions from your competitors....
Simple metrics like "followers" and "likes" are usually dismissed by the gurus but actually play an important part in your company's progress...
.Most social media “gurus” will be quick to point out that activity-based metrics such as number of posts, followers, or re-tweets are meaningless because they don’t measure real business value. I’m going to take a contrarian viewpoint today and explain that in the real world, these simple measurements are not only useful, they may be critical.
A few years ago, I was working as a consultant on a new marketing initiative for an extremely conservative, slow-moving company. As we were getting to know each other, I asked the people around the table “If we gathered here a year from now and you told me that our initiative had been wildly successful, what would have been achieved?”
One of the veterans of the team spoke up: “I would like to see that something … anything … actually HAPPENED!”...
Calls-to-action (CTAs) are among the most neglected of content marketing components — in both curated and created content. Yet, they are also among the discipline’s most essential features in terms of providing brand value. These simple, yet targeted, phrases are directly responsible for encouraging your audience to take a next step toward becoming a loyal customer, such as downloading your white paper, following you on Twitter, registering for your webinar, or sharing your content with a friend or colleague.
Without a call-to-action, content marketing efforts amount to little more than writing exercises. It’s not enough to publish useful information; you want readers to engage with you and take an action that will provide value for your business. Here are a few examples:...
Now that nearly every company has (or should have) some sort of online presence, content and social media marketing strategies must be sharp in order to help a business to really stand out. For every social media faux pas (such as the team from Amy’s Baking Company that began cursing out clients on Facebook) there are a number of shining examples of what social media and content marketing should be. Here are some of the best of the best....
... Sales lift, impact, and retention are just a few of the key measurements for any return-on-objective (ROO) program. (Note: I like to use ROO instead of ROI [return on investment] because it focuses content marketers on the real objectives.)
Sometimes ROO can be determined with one metric, while other times four or five are needed to show an impact on your organization’s business goals.ROO measurements come in all shapes and sizes, and usually include multiple items to give you the complete answer to your question. The important aspect to remember is you aren’t measuring just for the sake of measurement.
The tools and tactics below are used to directly determine what a project’s objectives should be. If you keep that in mind, you’ll get your ROO. Here are a few measurement initiatives to get you started...
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Here’s a significant trend described in a very fine digital marketing research report from SoDA — in the past year there has been a dramatic spike in the number of companies who no longer work with outside marketing agencies — 27 percent, up from 13 percent in the previous year.
This shift to marketing in house is even more remarkable considering the report also shows overall spending on digital marketing is going UP.The shift in North America is a little higher — 28 percent. The association describes this trend as “alarming” (if you work for an agency) but stops short of fully explaining why. They say that more agency work is focusing on innovation and specialized tasks but don’t really say why more companies are bringing work in-house. A lot more....
Marketing success requires a commitment to consistently create exceptional customer experiences, along with transparency, agility, and accountability at all levels. Unfortunately, many marketing leaders struggle to win and maintain internal support for digital marketing transformation.
Wouldn’t it be great to have just one simple measure of business success? What determines success in most businesses is whether customers like and buy the products and services offered. This is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) comes in. Many argue, that it is THE most important indicator of business success.
That’s a big claim and warrants a closer look at what the NPS is, why it’s a good measure, how to measure it, and how it can be improved to really become a key indicator of business success.What is it?The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is based on the fundamental premise that customers can be divided into three groups...
Measuring social media ROI isn't always easy. Many social efforts lend themselves to brand building, community building, and customer service. But done correctly, social media will deliver results. Use these 11 tools to measure ROI and social success.
Business Insider recently published a story on the death of social ROI. They claim that companies are starting to drop the idea that social media ROI can be measured.
I asked Nicole Harrison (@SocialNicole) about this and the importance of ROI in social media. She was adamant that social media done correctly will deliver results and recommended the following list of 11 free tools for measuring both ROI and social media success....
With so many channels available for brand messaging, how do we successfully go about creating a multichannel marketing campaign? Here are five easy steps.
Multichannel marketing is becoming increasingly important to marketers. Being that we are bombarded by nearly 3,000 marketing messages a day, there’s no way to know which platform will get us to bite. The best bet for marketers is to use many mediums to spread their message.
So, what is multichannel marketing?Essentially it’s sending your brand message through a variety of channels. It’s also known as multitouch marketing. Let’s say you want to launch a new product; your new Fresh Fig candle. You’d want to develop a plan for getting more sales through many channels....
Are you looking for a social media analytics tool that can link social media marketing to sales conversions? Here is my review of Oktopost - which does that.
How do you prove the ROI of your social media efforts? For most people, social ROI is proved by measuring likes, follows, tweets, retweets and clicks because they don’t think they can link social media activity to sales. And truth be told, for most of the inexpensive social media management platform options available click/follow/tweet tracking is all that is offered. But that is changing.
Recently I began testing a new option, Oktopost. Oktopost is a cost effecient, social media management, tracking and reporting platform that tracks clicks, and more importantly conversions, down to the individual Facebook, LinkedIn or G+ post and tweet level. It is this ability to track conversion at the individual post level that I’ve found most helpful as it finally provides a tool to report true social media ROI....
Businesses may focus on new customer programs, but going after customer retention is a lot more profitable in the long run...
Satisfaction drives loyalty. More importantly, it drives retention. The key to a healthy bottom line is the ability to keep your customers.
According to the book Outside In [click here for infographic] by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, retaining customers drives revenue in three ways: - Incremental sales from current customers. - Retained sales as a result of lower churn. - New sales driven by word of mouth (referrals).
Can small improvements in retention make a big difference? Absolutely. According to Gartner Group, “A 5% improvement in retention can increase profitability by upwards of 25% to 125%.”...
For every £1 spent in social media, a potential value of £3.34 can be generated, according to a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) into FMCG brands including Heinz, Kettle and Twinings.
Research found four out of five consumers would be more inclined to buy a brand more often in the future after being exposed to its social media presence, while 83% of consumers exposed to social media said they would trial a brand’s product.
The study of the social media activity of Heinz, Kettle and Twinings over an eight-week period found there was a 22%, 17% and 19% uplift in sentiment respectively when a consumer was exposed to the brands’ social media presence....
Stats indicate that while marketers know why they need to be active on social media, they don’t necessarily know how. Only 37 per cent think their Facebook efforts are effective – that’s barely more than one in three! Most are still unsure of social media best practice or how to develop effective strategies – creating a social strategy is still a major concern for 83 per cent of marketers.
Even more shockingly, only about one in four agreed they were even able to measure their social activities.It seems marketers are being social. They’re just not very good at it.We’re still destined for social success.There are, however, some positive indicators. Marketers have indicated at least 10 benefits of social media marketing – and the results aren’t half bad....
Public Relations vs. Advertising. Earned media vs. Paid media. Huge budgets vs. tiny ones. Advertising and Public Relations have been engaged in a love-hate relationships for decades. What’s more effective? What offers better ROI? How should they work together? Should they work together?
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When it comes to website metrics, here's how to measure what matters.