The concept of marketing is centuries old, dating back to the barter trade era. However, it has evolved from persuasive negotiation into a tactful balance of strategy and technology driven by customer behavior.
While all marketers wish they could say they developed a perfect marketing strategy, perfection is an illusion in marketing. The ever-changing customer buying patterns and needs mean that the best you can do is adapt to the changes and fine-tune your marketing tactics.
However, tracking your marketing activities is necessary to establish their impact. Consequently, companies employ the following techniques to track marketing success.
- Risk Monitoring And Responses
To streamline marketing operations risk planning is an invaluable yet underrated marketing mix element. As earlier stated, no marketing plan is perfect, and the uncomfortable truth is that the risk of loss is among the uncertainties associated with marketing. Therefore, measuring the risk associated with a marketing strategy should be a priority in the strategy’s execution.
The elements of risk to consider when measuring the inherent risks in a marketing plan include the value at risk (VaR) and the frequency of loss. VaR is the maximum or extent of the financial loss within a given duration and estimates the value of an investment. On the other hand, loss frequency helps establish how often a predicted loss is likely to occur.
Although risk has a negative connotation, it has the following benefits in tracking marketing activities. First, identifying risks eliminates unpleasant surprises that could compromise your entire marketing strategy.
Second, it allows you to explore ways to tackle and perhaps even eliminate the risk. Therefore, tracking marketing risk responses that minimize potential losses should matter to your business.
- Consider The Customer Lifetime Value
The customer lifetime value (CLV) is the total income or revenue a business expects to generate throughout its relationship with a customer who engages with its products or services. It takes into account projected customer orders.
However, besides the financial gains due to the business from its target customer, CLV also measures customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Moreover, it indicates a marketing activity’s sustainability, including cash flow for revenue and growth.
A high CLV means that the marketing strategies geared toward customer retention are effective. On the other hand, a low score means that a business may want to consider alternative marketing activities to customer retention, such as customer acquisition. While CLV focuses on customer retention effects effectiveness, the customer acquisition value estimates how much it costs to generate brand interest, converting a cold contact into a buyer.
- Track The Return On Investment (ROI)
Any business’s overarching goal is to generate enough revenue to facilitate sustainable, long-term growth. Marketing activities play a significant role in a business’s growth. Consequently, most businesses allocate up to 10% of their total revenue to digital and traditional marketing strategies during budgetary allocations.
The marketing activities that help increase revenue include brand awareness, lead generation, customer acquisition, up-selling, customer retargeting, search engine optimization, content, marketing, and advertising. However, all the highlighted marketing efforts require money.
Second, businesses in different industries and growth stages require unique marketing strategies. Therefore, tracking various marketing activities deployed to generate revenue helps a business’s marketer allocate funds to the most effective income-generating marketing activities.
- Consider Your Marketing and Business Goals
While profit and sustainable growth is the long-term marketing goal for any viable business, short and medium-term goals vary dramatically from business to business. For example, a small or medium-sized enterprise’s immediate goal is likely to create brand awareness and customer acquisition.
On the other hand, an established enterprise is more likely to be interested in customer retention and customer engagement campaigns that enhance brand loyalty. Defined marketing goals help businesses choose the most effective marketing channel for digital campaigns.
Moreover, marketing goals guide a marketer in selecting the strategies that best align with each goal. Therefore, having defined goals allows you to use marketing techniques as a measure for each goal. However, marketing goals should be straightforward, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
- Use Comprehensive Marketing Analytics Tools
Analytics tools are vital in any comprehensive digital marketing strategy. The digital tools are software and platforms that enable a marketer or company to track or monitor data and forecast digital assets’ performance across various channels like websites and social media pages.
Such tools use attribution modeling and data aggregation to showcase current performance and generate forecasts. Attribution models determine how the analytics software credits different channels for customer actions along the conversion path. On the other hand, data aggregation entails gathering consumer behavior data from different channels into a central view on the analytics platform.
However, while analytics tools function on similar principles, they vary in the metric fields that a marketer can view. Second, some facilitate A/B testing for website interface features like prompt or call-to-action (CTA) buttons. Therefore, ensure you choose an analytics tool that tracks your business’s most relevant data.
- Identify Useful Metrics
Although analytics tools are invaluable in marketing, their vast metric options can be overwhelming, especially for new marketers. Some metrics are more valuable than others under different marketing scenarios. Therefore, identify the metrics that best align with your marketing campaign.
Conclusion:
While marketing is pivotal to business growth, marketing strategies and activities are not cookie-cutter solutions. Therefore, understanding your business and target customer’s behavior is vital in tracking marketing activities that will grow your business significantly.
