‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it’

Peter Drucker, Management consultant, educator and author

Marketing is all about continuously planning, assessing, monitoring, and refining. You must be constantly monitoring your marketing strategy to allow you to plan effectively for the future. Without looking at your results and monitoring, marketing can become about guesswork which isn’t effective. Looking at how your target audience have reacted and responded to your marketing activity is essential in making decisions for the future. This is where your Results Model comes in.

Set your Timeline

30/60/90 days – you may have planned your marketing for the next 6 months but that doesn’t mean you don’t touch it in that time. Creating a short/medium/long term timeline helps you to align your marketing to your goals. It gives you focus and allows you to constantly review and make any necessary changes/ This gives you increased effectiveness and more control. Review the conversion model, find out if you have any weak spots and look for ways to improve.

Measure Conversions

A conversion doesn’t necessarily have to be a purchase, it’s a way of measuring any improvement within your target market. you can use pages manager for Facebook and Instagram here where you can view all insights. You can see how many people have seen your posts, how many have clicked on these posts, and how many have clicked through to the website. Use this information together with the amount of customers you have per term.

You also need to take into account any external factors here too that could effect your metrics, like world events, seasonal changes, and outside influences.

Choose your Metrics

These can be split into smaller sections to make it easier to analyse.

Awareness

• Website visitor traffic volume
• Amount of positive press and media coverage
• increase in visits to Facebook and Instagram pages

Engagement

• Number of enquiries via website contact us page
• Number of enquiries via telephone
• Number of enquiries via social media direct messages
• Number of enquiries via face to face meetings
• Number of leads gained from events
• Number of newsletter sign ups via website

Education

• Increase in number of views to website pages with specialist information
• Number of click throughs from content marketing
• Meetings set up from networking
• Volume of conversation and replies across a set time period
• Consumer reply when questioned about exposure to marketing campaign
• Number of quality enquiries via email/social media

Evaluation

• Number of views of testimonial website page
• Number of enquiries coming from referrals
• Number of requests for further information following face to face meetings

Sales

• Number of sales
• Repeat purchases

Purchase Support

• Visits to website FAQ page
• Calls and emails asking for further information
• Number of customer referrals

Social Media Metrics

• Number of page likes (overall as well as within a certain time frame)
• Number of comments received/replied to
• Number of retweets, favourites and direct messages
• Volume of conversation and replies across a set time frame
• Shares

Measuring the success of your tools

It is now helpful to create a table to show which tools you have used and how you are going to measure their success. think about which category they fit into and be specific.

Evaluating

After measuring the success of your tools you should evaluate against your objectives. If you have achieved some of your objectives but not all, this is a great time to reassess what you’re doing and what you can do differently in the future. It’s important to always evaluate against your objectives and goals to ensure you are always looking forward to making your business better and more profitable, and avoid getting stuck in a rut.