MEASURE WHAT IS MEASURABLE
Back in the old days, proving the value of marketing efforts (and marketing $$$'s) was a more difficult endeavor. Think about it for a second. You create a pamphlet, you create a sign, you buy space on a billboard, you start a customer reach out program, or buy time on TV ads. All those things would be in the mix for traditional marketing efforts.
However, how do you measure the return on those efforts? Can you count how many cars drive by your billboard and how many of those drivers actually viewed your billboard and read your marketing message? Can you then measure how many of those billboard viewers became customers? The short answer is no way! Truly the only way to measure that return was to survey customers post-purchase and simply ask and even then, the results were limited.
Needless to say, proving value of marketing was difficult. It was easy to see that marketing indeed had value especially in the processes of brand building. After all, marketing was a big industry before the invention of the internet. With the advent of the Internet for the first time ever marketing efforts are easy to measure and thus easy to prove the value of.
MAKING MEASURABLE WHAT IS NOT
As I mentioned above, marketing efforts are more measurable than ever with the invention of online and digital marketing. Before, things like impressions (views), visits from the impressions, and sales from those visits were extremely difficult to track. Not today, today we have plenty of tools to track and monitor all of these things.
If it's website tracking there is the free Google Analytics, then there is also the paid services that are more marketing oriented like HubSpot or Marketo. These platforms are full blown digital marketing tools, but tracking efforts is key to all steps of the processes these platforms trumpet so they all have analytics and tracking built in.
When it comes to email marketing, almost all email marketing tools offered today come with built in analytics platforms. This will allow your company to track deliveries, open rates, click rates, and sales from those emails. This will help you tailor your email marketing campaigns to your visitors and increase the lead pull-through in those campaigns.
When it comes to digital ad tracking, the elephant in the room is Google Ad-words. Partnered with Google analytics, you can track key metrics like impressions, clicks, etc. Because Ad-Words (& Ad-sense) is a paid service, these tracking tools are so important to showing you the return on your investment.
the value of tracking everything
Anytime you lay down dollars on marketing services and activities you're making an investment. But how do you know what you're getting for your investment? The answer is tracking. Tracking and measuring everything is the only true way to measure the effectiveness of your efforts and show whether or not you're getting anything out of your investment.
Better yet, if you are, how much are you getting? How many actual customers came from a particular campaign? What do those customers translate to in terms of actual dollars? For the first time ever, you can actually see the monetary value of your marketing dollars with digital marketing. It really is the smartest and most value focused way to spend money when it comes to marketing.
the game has changed for the better
The marketing game has changed. No longer are marketing activities focused on the company conducting them, the brand, and the products. Marketing activities are now customer focused. Everything you do in digital marketing is focused on helping, pleasing, and attracting your potential customers to your website, and encouraging them to take action.
However, some things never change and marketing and sales are still very much a numbers game. Instead of billboards, we have digital ads, instead of in-store customers, we have ecommerce platforms and online visitors and these numbers are more easily measured and tracked. Now we can see how many visits translate into how many leads translate into how many customers, and show value all along the way.
The marketing game has changed for the better. Both for the industry as a whole and for the customers they serve.
