Is Online Marketing Worth the Investment?
Most business owners asks us a really important question, how do you know the money you’re spending on online marketing is worth it? It’s important for these business owners to understand that the dollar value and specific metrics that each marketing campaign generates. We list the different ways that you can track the performance of your marketing efforts.
In this article, we explore the types of marketing campaigns, how to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and tools for measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns to understand if your marketing dollars are worth the investment.
Types of Online Marketing Campaigns
Although older style outbounding marketing techniques are still used today and can be effective. The new way people are using marketing is to get the customer to contact them (also referred to as “warm leads”.) Inbound marketing strategy is designed to lure customers to your business by such means as attracting people to your website or by the effective placement of ads on popular social media sites. This type of approach is much more subtle than outbound marketing in practice. Here are some typical inbound marketing strategies:
1. Email marketing campaigns
2. Getting people to your website and filling out forms, emailing, or calling your business
3. Social Media Posts and Placement of Strategic Advertising
4. Search Engine Optimization
5. Pay per click campaigns on search engine such as Google or Bing
How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Campaigns
The first step to understanding if your marketing dollars is worth the investment, you have to set goals that you are looking to achieve in your campaigns. Before you start your campaign, it’s best to map out what you desire at the outcome. I’ve listed example of goal that you can set for your campaign:
● Email Marketing: The most popular metrics are open rates and click rates. However, if you are running a sales promotion you could be looking for a certain number of calls/emails from the campaign for your salespeople to follow up on.
● Website: The most popular statistics are usually the number of visitors coming to your website, how long they are staying on your page, are the clicking onto the next page, and how many forms did they fill out. There are many more goals that you can track through Google Analytics and Google Web Master Tools.
● Social Media Posts: Usually business are trying to grow their social media followers in order to push out content to them and eventually convert to customers. Common metrics are usually growing your userbase, engagement (how many people are liking your posts), and sharing your posts with other users. The key to social media is understanding your audience and make sure that they enjoy your content.
● Search Engine Optimization: This is a very powerful tool for your business. When people are searching keywords related to your business, your website will appear on the search engine results. The best metrics is aligning your business with the right keywords that people are typing in. You can track the performance through Google Analytics and Call Tracking Metrics, and testing which keywords you are being listed in through our system.
● Pay-Per-Click: The best metrics for pay-per-click campaigns are usually related to users taking a specific action after they’ve clicked on your ad. They can be broken down by filling out a form or calling the business directly. There are many tools to track these campaigns such as Call Tracking Metrics, Conversion optimization on landing pages, and triggers for forms.
Conclusion
There are many tools at your disposal that can be used to measure the effectiveness of your campaign. You have to try different techniques in order to to see which campaign is performing the best. Understanding the variety of tools at your disposal is the key to understanding if your marketing dollars are worth the investment.
For years companies did not have to answers to questions concerning a marketing campaign’s effectiveness with the exception of actual sales. Today, if a marketing campaign fails to produce the desired results in sales, it may still be a valuable resource to build off the information you garnered from analyzing it. Using this data can help to make your next marketing campaign highly successful sales wise.
It is imperative that you use the analytical marketing tools that are available to gather data today and use that data to shape continually future marketing campaigns toward being highly successful ones.
