10 KPIs to measure the success of your marketing strategy
Updated: Jul 2, 2020
Are you over-complicating your Marketing Strategy?
When you hear the phrase marketing strategy, you know you should have one and you know it should be generating a significant proportion of your new business leads, but why is it you often end up feeling that somehow you didn’t get the return on investment you were expecting?
Marketing and lead generation strategies that are planned, well thought out and executed effectively have the potential to ignite revenue growth.
If your marketing strategy feels over-complicated and isn’t hitting the mark, perhaps its time to go back to basics and get your leading and lagging indicators of success right first.
Revenue is a lagging indicator and whilst it remains top of our list for measuring success, here are some of the other metrics you might want to track as you implement your lead generation strategies and marketing campaigns:
1. Organic traffic
How much of your website traffic is coming from organic (i.e. not paid) website searches?
Its not only cheaper to generate leads this way, it means you are giving your audience what they want and what they need in terms of content, products and solutions.
It means the words on your website and in your blogs are written for your audience, you’re not paying to get in front of them, they are finding you, you've earned their attention.
With this kind of traffic, your ROI will almost certainly be higher. But, you have to work for it and you have to be patient.
2. Time on page
Whether they got there from a Google ad, a blog or some other source, how long are your potential customers spending on your website?
If they are disappearing within 10-15 seconds, they are likely not finding what they were looking for, which means your site is missing an opportunity.
Measure time on site and use this as a measure of the quality of content and relevance to your audience.
3. Bounce rate
Closely linked to time on page above, this is a measure of how many people hit your site and then immediately bounce without visiting a second page.
This is another great measure of the quality and relevance of your content.
4. Customer acquisition cost
Divide your marketing spend by the number of closed deals resulting from this spend and you’ll get your customer acquisition cost.
However, this number can be skewed if you are running longer term SEO campaigns that wont see a short term result, so keep in mind your overarching marketing strategy when making decisions based on this metric.
5. Visitor conversion ratio
This is the number of visitors that hit your landing pages, home page or blog posts, that convert into a lead, enquiry or sale.
This could be from a completed form, or booking a demo, setting up a discovery call or making a purchase.
6. Lead conversion ratio
Of all the leads that you generate, how many are actually converting into sales opportunities?
This is a measure of the quality of the leads you are generating. If your lead conversion ratio is low, you might be sending your sales team on a lot of wild goose chases.
7. Sales conversion ratio
We’re now into sales territory, but
you absolutely shouldn’t be operating in silos as a sales and marketing team.
The lines are blurred and although they are different skill-sets, the two should operate in unison, with shared goals, targets and accountability.
If your marketing team are hitting it out of the park with lead generation, but your sales team are abysmal at closing leads – you have a problem to look into. It might also turn out that your sales team are not the issue, but the type of leads you are generating are actually the problem.
8. Cost per lead
Do you know how much each lead your marketing efforts generate costs you?
When you look at your cost per lead, is it proportionate to your average sale value?
We often hear business owners say “we spend a lot on marketing, I know some of it works but I’m not exactly sure which strategies are working best”.
If you don’t have a clear marketing strategy and you can’t measure ROI, you have a problem.
There is absolutely no need to have zero line of sight on your cost per lead and which channels (the source of your leads) are working, and which are not.
9. New meetings / demos / discovery calls
Depending on your business, you might want to track a slightly different metric here. A meeting, product demo or discovery call is a commitment of time from a potential customer, if they are prepared to give you that, you should track it and then track how many of those demos turn into proposals and ultimately closed deals.
10. Lead source
This is an obvious one, but its surprising how often business owners, marketing and sales VPs fail to have a line of sight on where their leads are coming from.
This is a great metric to help you make ongoing decisions about your marketing budget.
At One Zebra, our Premium Business Growth Package customers can access live dashboards, customized to show the metrics that matter to them, along with regular customized reports that allow them to make smarter, more robust decisions and drive revenue growth.
If you need help simplifying your marketing strategy, we can facilitate marketing strategy workshops that will help you to get more customers, close more sales and ignite revenue growth for your business.
We'll also give you access to customer and content insights specific to your industry, from our artificial intelligence platform.
Click here to schedule a discovery call if you'd like to find out more.