Marketers are using analytical approaches to hone their craft, letting hard numbers drive their decisions. Knowing which approaches get the best return on investment (ROI) allows businesses to pivot in the most profitable direction. Using big data means a greater understanding of your target audience, competition, and various conditions impacting your industry.
However, as more data becomes available (especially from digital channels), it can be difficult to determine which metrics matter. You can quickly go from storing data to information overload if you’re unsure what information is crucial to collect. It boils down to being able to select values that help you create a quantifiable sales funnel.
Data plays a substantial role in marketing decisions but does not have to be overwhelming if you know what matters most to monitor. Use this guide to track the fundamental figures every marketer should monitor in 2021.
Leads by source
What it is: Knowing the total number of leads generated by each source can be a helpful tool. More than 60% of companies use lead generation as the sole metric to gauge content success. This should include a final total by day, week, or month of how many leads have been generated from each marketing source.
Examples would be the breakdown of your digital campaigns, such as landing pages, content marketing, email drip campaigns, Google Ads, Facebook, or Instagram. If you have traditional marketing, such as direct mailers or local ads, you can include the totals from those, as well.
Why it matters: Being able to see that you generated 50 new leads from one landing page, but only four from Facebook advertising, for example, can tell you where to focus your efforts.
In some instances, it might make your marketing team aware that they are missing an opportunity in one avenue, and that needs to be revisited completely. Seeing a great number of leads from one source could also help you recognize the value of that source and direct you to spend more advertising dollars in that area.
How to track it: Depending on the tools you have available for tracking and how often you want to review this data, you can establish a report generated to include all your multichannel marketing efforts. You may want to utilize this report as a meeting resource at month-end to see what has worked best and plan for the next month.
How to improve it: This metric can be utilized to improve in highlighted areas and confirm past efforts. If you’re having consistent challenges in content marketing, for example, you can seek help from an independent professional who specializes in content marketing. Furthermore, your in-office team may not have time to develop ongoing articles, but you can easily outsource this to a professional writer and pay only for the work you need to be done.
Traffic conversion rate
What it is: This marketing KPI describes the amount of traffic visiting your website or landing pages that convert to leads. It shines a light on your website’s efficiency and optimization and how well your content placement and formatting get your branding message to viewers.
Why it matters: How often does a website visitor convert to a captured lead? This critical data helps you understand the flow of website visitors. Being in tune with this data means keeping a constant eye on what landing pages work best and optimizing your website and content accordingly. Along with this data, knowing where a viewer originated—whether it’s organic, direct, or social media—can help you fine-tune your campaigns to get more conversions.
How to track it: Not only should you track this data regularly through your website management platform, but also a dedicated individual or team should maintain a watchful eye on these numbers to maximize efforts.
How to improve it: This crucial marketing KPI should constantly improve through monitoring what works best and having a team member thoughtfully strive to best display your branding message. If these numbers are lacking, bringing on an expert freelancer to improve your brand development and website optimization can help.
Customer conversion rate
What it is: Tracking your customer conversion rate may be the most important tool for determining where to focus your efforts. Knowing where you generate leads is great, but this marketing KPI provides a way to see which type of leads convert to customers.
Why it matters: Generating leads is crucial but could be in vain if none are converting to customers. Compare your conversion rate to industry standards to see where you fall in this category.
If your numbers are low, ask yourself why. Are your campaigns outdated, or is there a customer service issue? Is a chatbot being left unmonitored, and are you missing the window for a representative to jump in to assist toward the next step?
Analyze your current situation, and hone in on areas to refine. This rate can almost always be improved, whether through finding ways to make the process smoother or identifying team members who need follow-up sales or service training.
How to track it: Most customer relationship management (CRM) software has a dashboard for workers responsible for sales. You can review this as a team, and individuals can have daily, weekly, and monthly goals to achieve in this category, which can be automatically tracked and utilized as a training tool.
How to improve it: If this metric helps pinpoint areas of improvement, you may want to go back to the basics and have some fresh research and strategizing.
Engaging an independent professional can provide a fresh set of expert eyes on your strategy and may lend you helpful ideas that your team had not considered. Additional customer service or sales training may also be identified as necessary to help your team convert leads to customers. Furthermore, if your sales team is getting bogged down with administrative tasks, hiring a top independent professional for administration help can free their time to focus on sales.
Cost per lead
What it is: How much does each lead cost to acquire? The lower the cost per lead that you can get, the better for business growth.
Why it matters: Knowing your cost per lead from each marketing campaign can help the business in numerous ways. You can see which efforts have the best ROI and strategize accordingly. While one advertising avenue may seem more expensive than others, if you can show that it brings in a significant amount of leads at the lowest cost per lead, you can identify that it gets the best results.
How to track it: Set up tracking goals in your CRM to identify the lowest cost per lead advertising effort. If you want to calculate this formula, you can divide the total cost to run the campaign by the total number of leads it generated.
How to improve it: You can improve this metric through an ongoing analysis of which campaigns work best. If you’re not reaching your cost-per-lead goals, you may want to reimagine your approaches. For example, if your website is not attracting the leads you want, you can consider working with an independent conversion optimization expert to drive down your lead acquisition costs.
Customer lifetime value
What it is: Attracting customers is one aspect; keeping them is another. This marketing KPI shines a light on your customer retention. You can calculate this by multiplying your average sale amount per customer by your average number of sales per year and your average retention time for a typical customer.
For example, if your average sale amount is $100, your average sales per year are three, and you keep a customer for two years, your customer lifetime value would be as follows:
$100 x 3 x 2 = $600
Why it matters: The significance of this metric is that it allows you to focus on keeping customers, rather than just driving sales. No business wants to fall into the rotating door mentality, where you constantly have to push for new customers while your current customers leave. You can use this metric to identify areas of refinement to achieve stronger retention numbers.
How to track it: Most CRMs will have the ability to set up customer lifetime value tracking. You can determine early on the time frame in which you should track this number—by month, quarter, or year. How often your customers typically spend with you can help you decide how to track it.
How to improve it: If this metric does not meet your standards, you can hone in on retention efforts. Is the problem a lack of engagement with customers? Is there a customer service concern, or an area where you can improve the perceived value of your product or service? Could the renewal process be simpler or smoother? Consider a top independent professional to help, such as a social media marketer, to regularly engage with customers.
Track and improve your marketing metrics with top independent professionals
Tracking these marketing metrics can help maximize your efforts and your bottom line. If your numbers are not where you want them to be, independent marketing professionals can help.
