One of the things I love most about online marketing is the metrics that allow you to easily gauge the success of a campaign. At the touch of a computer key I can tell what percentage of blog readers or ad visitors are being converted into shoppers.
However, similar to direct response marketing which can offer easy measurement of say, coupon redemption, but may not accurately account for brand recall that leads to future business; even strong web metrics can’t tell you how many people may have seen your online content/ads and then returned later as organic traffic.
According to a recent article on BtoBonline.com (http://tinyurl.com/26ndeeo), “When it comes to measuring marketing performance, the top areas for which marketers have metrics are campaign management (40%), customer management (33%), lead management (31%) and market outcomes (31%).” None of these percentages satisfy me, and if you’re a marketer they shouldn’t satisfy you either.
So what’s the solution?
Here are two for consideration: First, invest more time and resources into effective forms of marketing measurement, and second, do a better job of clearly identifying the goals of your marketing campaigns with other organizational, sales and product development leaders.
However, investing in improved metrics can frequently be a tough sell internally, as organizational leaders who don’t understand marketing may still view sales performance as the easiest and most preferred method of marketing measurement; even though sales are often not the best scale and just as often not the short term goal of many marketing campaigns.
Therefore, here's one way to help ensure that you get the credit you are due, and it’s pretty basic: Each time you launch a new marketing campaign, attempt to control (or at least identify) all internal and external variables that may impact the results of your campaign. Believe me, if you don’t, the marketing cynics will always find a way to account for them after the campaign. Plus it’s just smart marketing.
After you've identified all of the potential variables, you may even realize that the timing of your campaign isn’t optimal, allowing you to move your advertising/promotional dollars to a time that will likely generate better (and more accurate) results.
