Successful marketing isn’t done by chance. The only way to achieve your goals is to track, measure, and adjust. Let’s get into how.
Tracking can be hard to do, but it doesn’t have to be. What if I told you that there are certain elements to look at that would help you determine how your campaign is doing, and with these elements that we call “Metrics,” you can make adjustments to make a campaign successful?
Like that idea? Good. Because that’s actually how marketing is done and I want to get into that with you today.
These metrics that we measure are known as Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs for short. They are specific elements we look at in a campaign that will allow us to measure if our campaigns are getting the results we want.
Most Marketing Campaigns Fail
Yep, that’s right. Even though the numbers vary from different sources, it’s suggested that between 50-80% of all marketing campaigns fail. That’s pretty grim, even if you look at the optimistic side of the statistics. So why do so many marketing campaigns fail?
There are multiple reasons why marketing campaigns fail from failing to address your target audience (you can grab our free Customer Avatar Worksheets from learn.xyzmktg.com) or having a message that is too generic or doesn’t resonate with the audience to simply having no interest in your product or service. Yep, that’s a thing, too. However, if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’d already know if that was this issue.
One of the major reasons why so many fail is because the KPIs that tell you exactly how a campaign is doing aren’t being tracked. Simple as that.
Think about it, do you know your ROAS on a campaign? How about the CTR or LVC? If you understand these terms, great. If you don’t, there’s no need to worry, we will get into those and more, and even give you a nice little cheat sheet to refer back to them.
These different terms highlight key areas of your campaign that tell you various aspects of each campaign. For example, the ROAS, known as Return On Ad Spend, will let you know if you are making money on how much you are spending on ads.
The CTR known as the Click Through Rate can tell you if people find your ad interesting enough to click on it and go to your source where you have your offer.
See how even these two metrics can begin to paint a story of how well a campaign is doing? Now, imagine having an entire arsenal of metrics you can look at so you can get a birdseye view of your campaign at any given time. That’s the power of KPIs.
The Pain Of Not Using KPIs Hits Your Wallet First
The painful reality is, that you’ll feel a much harder hit to your wallet if you don’t use KPIs. With the KPIs in place, you’ll be able to see where a campaign is struggling before too much financial damage is caused, but without them, you just get to see your bank depleting without a reason why.
This is why KPIs are so crucial to put into place. If you can see where a bottleneck is at, or where a problem is occurring, you can fix the issue before you experience substantial losses. But even more so, with KPIs in place, you can stop the bleeding, fix the issue, and make a failing campaign turn around and become successful.
I say it all the time, “If you had to assign one word to explain marketing, it would be ‘Testing.’” The more you text, the more data you’ll get to make your adjustments, which allows you to build a successful campaign.
Now the importance of testing goes beyond just the financial impact of a marketing campaign.
Now, I don’t want to beat a dead horse with a stick here, but I want to bring home the importance that not having KPIs in place. If you are putting out the entirely wrong message to a campaign, you might even be damaging your brand. Think losing money is bad? Imagine losing your brand.
Let me explain.
Every day multiple companies put out nothing but ads, money requests, and other advertising without spreading any goodwill. These companies become known for just wanting to get into your wallet without providing any additional value.
If all of your KPIs continue dropping, this can be a sign that the entire business is starting to sink and it’s time to reevaluate the entire marketing strategy to make sure there are goodwill and community efforts involved.
KPIs tell you this when you know how to read them! At the end of this, you’ll be able to!
Let’s Implement Some KPIs Into Your Marketing
By now, I’ve hoped I’ve shown how important KPIs are in making sure your campaign is successful, but let’s get into what other types of KPIs there are and how you can use them to further your marketing efforts.
I mentioned a few KPIs above and promised to introduce some others. You can continue reading through the KPIs list here, or grab the cheat sheet at learn.xyzmktg.com. In this cheat sheet, I go further into underlying issues and ways to optimize, but for simplicity’s sake, here are some of the main metrics you should focus on and what they do.
Frequency: How often people are seeing the same content.
Impressions: Total number of times your content has been displayed.
Reach: Number of unique individuals who have seen your content.
CTR (Click-Through Rate): Ratio of clicks to impressions on ads.
CPC (Cost Per Click): Cost incurred for each click on the ad.
Landing Page Viewers: Number of visitors reaching your landing page.
Bounce Rate: Percentage of visitors leaving after viewing one page.
Scroll Ratio: How far visitors scroll on your webpage.
Cost Per Action (CPA): Cost of acquiring a desired customer action.
Cost Per Lead (CPL): Cost of acquiring a lead.
A/B Testing for Ads and Content: Effectiveness of different content versions.
Segmentation and Targeting: Effectiveness of market segmentation and targeting.
Engagement Metrics (Likes, Comments, Shares): Level of audience engagement with content.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Total value a customer contributes to their relationship.
Conversion Rate Optimization: How effectively your site converts visitors.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Financial return from advertising efforts.
Email Open and Click-Through Rates: Your email campaign’s engagement level.
Brand Awareness and Perception: Recognition and perception of your brand.
Metrics can technically be whatever you feel would contribute to the success and understanding of your business, but these are very common metrics you’ll see among landing page software, ad platforms, analytics, and more.
Get close to these metrics and understand them inside and out. The better you understand these metrics, the better you can make decisions for your campaigns and your business. You can find resources from prominent companies like Google, Facebook, and others that can further your understanding beyond the scope of this blog.
A quick example of how to use these metrics would be knowing how many people click your ad, land on your landing page, make a purchase, and then continue to spend over the following months or years.
Build Effectiveness With Testing And Optimization
As you continue to learn about the results of your campaign by tracking crucial KPIs, it’s what you do with that information that begins to make the difference. When you learn about the section on your landing page where people leave your page (known as ‘Bouncing’), you can make adjustments to that section.
Or if you understand what headlines on your ads get clicked on or which don’t. All this information allows you to continue to build upon what’s working and abandon what’s not.
As you continue to refine your campaigns, you’ll find that even simple changes like a single word can change a campaign so it’s important to keep track of absolutely everything.
With that, it’s important when you look over the KPIs, you want a place for them to live, somewhere you can track them and review them consistently. For me, I like to have a simple spreadsheet that I keep in, organized by the date I recorded the metric. That way, you can constantly compare dates and metrics.
It doesn’t hurt to have a spreadsheet with history in it as well, otherwise, you might not be sure what was changed when reviewing the metrics so you can readjust it if the change brings negative results. This is a great way to test the effectiveness of a campaign through A/B Testing.
Building Predictable Marketing
Let’s get into the depth of this article. Why would you want to track all these KPIs and fully understand your business when it’s working just fine? Scale, growth, or just saving money. The reasons can be endless on why you’d want to track.
However, there is one underlying ultimate goal behind tracking your KPIs and that is predictability When you can predict your marketing, your marketing budget is better utilized, your customers are happier, the sales team has an easier job with higher conversion rates, leads come in consistently, and a lot of other amazing benefits.
When you embrace KPIs, you’ll find that you’ll be able to make better business decisions and increase profitability. If you’d like to get started, make sure you download our KPI Cheat Sheet and if you want a place to scale your business, consider trying our Mission Control CRM to build your business.
Thank you,
Citations
Forbes: This article cites 8 common reasons for campaign failure, highlighting the difficulty of achieving success. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/08/26/8-common-reasons-why-marketing-campaigns-fail/)
Small Business Trends: This site mentions a study by U.S. Bank stating that 78% of small businesses fail because of a lack of a well-developed marketing plan. (https://www.salesrenewal.com/resources/why-small-business-marketing-fails-so-often/)
LinkedIn: This article on digital marketing ad campaigns claims an 80% failure rate, emphasizing the need for experimentation and iteration. (https://www.webfx.com/digital-marketing/learn/does-digital-marketing-fail/)
