One of the biggest complaints I hear from business owners and marketers is not having the capability to show the value and impact of marketing efforts. Core to this problem is understanding how marketing is defined. Marketing is a science and because of that, not everything will work the way you want it to—results can be unexpected. Marketing requires making multiple assumptions, rapid iteration based on results of those assumptions and a thesis of results. Until the first step (and investment) has been taken, further optimization of actions will be delayed until you fully determine the next best step forward. Each product, service, app and brand caters to a different demographic at varying points in time. There is no marketing quick fix to boost sales and you should be skeptical if someone promises you something that “just works.”
Where do you start?
You MUST paint a picture of where you are and where you want to be. This should be done in a way that can be visualized and easy to edit as key metrics or KPIs change. The metric that matters most is the cost per sale or overall sales resulting from the support of marketing.
I use the word ‘support’ because it’s nearly impossible to determine where someone heard about your company originally or how they initially engaged. It could have been an ad on the radio, over conversation with a friend, in a product review or a podcast interview. You want to prove value by showing that marketing support helped to push sales to the end goal.
How can I create a visualization of my data?
Here’s the good news: I have a free spreadsheet template to help you with this. It has been created to give you a way to show how budgets and conversion percentages can change the cost of sales. I explain a little more about this in the video. You can download the Marketing KPI Visualizer Template here.
If you need help determining where to find data or how to build your marketing strategy using a metric analysis, we can help. This can involve anything from measuring your website traffic to helping you build content programs. You may also want to look into CRM tools such as Hatchbuck or HubSpot that can dramatically increase your ability to track results.
Welcome to my first post in an ongoing effort to help you cast positive influence to your audience! Each month, I’ll share Justin’s Musts clueing you into the latest digital technologies and marketing tools I’m obsessing over.
In a 100% uptime world, you need tools that automate, track, report, and communicate your brand message while streamlining operational process. And don’t worry, cost friendly options are right at the top of the list. These are useful for all organizations from SMBs to large enterprises.
Keep in mind some of these tools may still be in beta, but are worth exploring to help them gain adoption.
Without further delay, here are a few tools I think are worth taking a look at.
Pablo allows you to use free high resolution stock images and quickly edit and size them for your social media posts. I use this religiously when I need to create an attractive image quickly.
TeamGantt is a paid service but it’s worth it to create easy to use Gantt charts. It has the ability to prioritize tasks in real time as they change in urgency and allows you to step out of list prioritization, giving you the ability to give your project teams relevant status and transparency to your clients. In the example, you will see how we use it for our website projects. This is a project manager dream.
In a time of heightened security around passwords, take advantage of Dashlane. Dashlane securely remembers all of your passwords and auto fills forms for you. IT’S FREE for one device and super easy to use. You couldn’t ask for more.
There are many calendar tools on the market, my favorite is Calend.ly. This handy tool allows you to sync your calendar to automatically let others see when you’re free. No more back and forth trying to herd cats! Calend.ly also lets you create team events for scheduling and specify the time durations for scheduling. We have even incorporated the embed code into our own website.
Make sure you subscribe to our blog. We will be giving you a monthly list of the new technologies that you can utilize to help propel your success.