9장
Measuring Results and Analyzing Success: The Feedback Loop
Once your marketing strategy is implemented, the final steps involve tracking results and analyzing success. The "Generate" and "Yield" components of the STRATEGY framework focus on measuring performance and extracting insights to improve future campaigns.
Before measuring campaign performance, revisit what you're trying to achieve. Look beyond simply launching the campaign to consider the specific actions you want to provoke from your audience. Ensure your KPIs can be tracked throughout the campaign and are aligned with your overall business strategy.
Measuring customer value requires defining what constitutes a "lead" for your organization. Establish lead values by determining average sale value, sales per customer, profit margins, customer acquisition costs, and projected lifetime value. This approach helps align specific measurements to your marketing campaign and provides results that senior leadership will understand.
Data becomes valuable when transformed into actionable insights. While tracking performance across marketing tactics helps with budget allocation, it's crucial to assess traffic quality, not just quantity. Examine metrics like bounce rate, page visits, and new versus returning visitors to determine true engagement.
Digital marketing campaigns can be tracked through various tools that collect data via tracking pixels. Website analytics tools like Google Analytics measure visits, traffic sources, time spent, and conversions. Even offline marketing tactics can be measured digitally through unique URLs, UTM parameters, and call tracking with different phone numbers for each marketing channel.
Regular performance reports-monthly, weekly, or even daily during crucial periods-help monitor campaign effectiveness. These should include traffic by source, year-over-year comparisons, bounce rates, ad spend, clicks, and conversions to measure ROI. Focus reports on metrics that align with objectives rather than tracking everything.
Before drawing conclusions, ensure data is statistically significant by analyzing trends over extended periods (ideally 12 months). This reveals genuine patterns rather than temporary fluctuations, enabling better forecasting and strategic decision-making.
KPIs are specific, measurable metrics that indicate whether marketing activities are achieving their goals. Effective KPIs must be actionable, quantifiable, transparent, and directly aligned with objectives-not merely interesting "vanity metrics." Essential marketing KPIs include conversion rate, ROI, customer lifetime value, cost per acquisition, close rate, and customer retention rate.
Different channels require specific KPIs:
• Websites: Conversion rates, basket abandonment, average order value for e-commerce; content downloads and lead form abandonment rates for B2B
• PPC: Click rate, click-through rate, cost per click, cost per conversion, conversion rate, customer lifetime value
• SEO: Organic traffic, search ranking, search visibility, organic sessions, brand vs non-branded traffic, backlinks, page speed
• Social media: Reach metrics (impressions, audience growth), engagement metrics (engagement rate, amplification rate), and conversion metrics (CTR, bounce rate)
• Direct mail: Response rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition, average order size
• Email marketing: Delivery rate, open rates, clicks, bounce rates, unsubscribes, click-to-open rate, device stats, spam score
Post-campaign analysis (PCA) is essential for understanding what worked and what didn't, informing future campaigns and assessing strategic success against objectives. PCA preparation should begin at campaign start, documenting dates and action plans. After campaign completion, analyze performance against objectives, critically evaluating what didn't work and what could be improved. Document what to repeat, change, or stop in future campaigns.
