Measuring marketing effectiveness has always been somewhat of a fuzzy math problem. I hate fuzzy math. As a fairly analytical marketer, I love the numbers. We once decided what job my husband should take – which would have radically changed our lives in it’s decision – by using a spreadsheet (with weighted factors to even the playing field in our decisionmaking.)
So what’s normally fuzzy? How many of those people visiting your web site are actually doing something useful. Like learning more about how you can solve their problem, for instance. Yes, Google will give you lovely stats on how many people visited and how long they stayed, and what page they viewed, or what they searched to find you. But do you know their names? Do you know their company name? How many times THAT particular person visited your site? Do you know what they downloaded? Looked at?
For B2B marketers, especially, the fuzziness of marketing ROI has always been a challenge. Retailers have had it easy. Use this coupon, get this deal. You can easily track coupon codes and discount offers. But if your sales lead time is six months, it’s hard to coupon effectively. But all of that has changed.
Now, we can EXPECT and DELIVER true ROI.
- Marketing metrics can tell you any day of the week what companies visited your web sitewhether or not they clicked on anything.
- It can tell you how many times they were there, too.
- If they fill out a form to get a great offer (content marketing!) it can tell you their name, how many times they’ve visited and what they’ve received over their lifetime of visiting.
There are tools out there now, amazing tools, coupled with content marketing (writing and producing awesome stuff your prospects want to read), that can transform how we do business. But the best part is in the knowing and the analysis of the data. What is truly working – what keywords are performing, what documents are performing.
To learn more about Measuring marketing effectiveness, request a marketing assessment!
