How Do You Know If Your Marketing Is Working?

Eric Wagner, Wagner Meters

Without knowing the answer to this one simple question, your marketing will never be on target. If you do not know which of your efforts are effective, you will always either be overspending or leaving money on the table. So how did the professionals know whether or not their marketing efforts are worthwhile?

Call Tracking

The world of marketing has changed significantly with the advent of the Internet and the prevalence of digital devices. It used to be for clients, and that we would place hundreds of ads in different printed magazines, each with a different phone number.

At the end of the month, the phone bill could tell us how many calls came into each number, and with a little spreadsheet work, we could track each campaign’s individual success. That methodology worked, but technology today has allowed us to take it to the next level.

Companies that provide call tracking services today still allow you to use the same methodology, but with automated analytics and reporting. To take it to the next level, though, you can use a service that inserts a snippet of code on your website. When a person visits your website, this code will replace the phone number the visitor sees with a number that is unique to them and then forward the call to your main number.

If that person calls, this system can link that call with the actions they have taken on the site already or take in the future. This allows us to track a call or conversion from start to finish. We can see the visitor arrived on our site after searching for “android cell phones,” visited a few informational pages, a product page, and then called a salesperson to get more information. If they come back and purchase via the website, we can track that too.

Knowing how many calls a marketing campaign is driving is a key to understanding whether your efforts are worth the cost.

Conversion Tracking

Any decent web analytics platform, including free Google Analytics, can track conversions and goal completions. Those are two separate things, and if you’re not tracking both, you’re probably not getting the full picture.

A surprising number of small and medium-sized businesses aren’t tracking conversions. This means that they will never know how many people ended up buying based on search engine queries, or online ads, or people typing their URL directly, or after a tracked phone call if they have that setup.

While it all comes down to conversions, eventually, there are often intermediate steps that you want to track to optimize your efforts. These trackable “goals” might be a webinar or newsletter signup, the download, chatting with a customer service rep, or something as specific as reading through most of a very important page on your website.

Ideally, you’ll be able to track the success of each campaign through conversions or one or more of these goal completions.

Longer-Term Effects

My favorite marketing campaigns have a clear, positive immediate ROI that we can track via the above methods. If you stop there, though, you will not see the full picture. Brand awareness is proven to influence buying decisions and is a legitimate (and measurable) marketing goal. Follow-up surveys of the targeted audience often measure this. The more your targeted industry is aware of your brand, the more future sales you’re likely to get. It’s an investment in the future.

Beyond simple awareness, many brands use marketing and ad campaigns to convince future customers of their needs over the long run. In general, remember that emotions and desires are infinitely more memorable than features.

The “Get a Mac” ad campaign2 that Apple ran from 2006 to 2009 (where they started each ad with something like “I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC”) wouldn’t necessarily have trackable results within the first month or two, but by the end of their 2006 fiscal year, Apple saw a 36% increase in sales.

The emotionally engaging, carefully crafted content lad longer-lasting effects, too – sales continued to grow prodigiously over the next half-decade.

Finally, at some point, you may have to incorporate expert judgment to determine whether a campaign is performing effectively. That may be expertise on the marketers’ side, or it may involve interviews of the client to determine their perceptions on how the marketplace is being influenced. Those companies willing to take this on faith risk spending more on a campaign that is really worth, but is often the companies who see and take advantage of opportunities that no one else is willing to pursue.

Conclusion

There are dozens of strategies and software platforms that professional marketing companies use to better target their efforts. That knowledge can make a professional marketing company many times more effective than those without immersion in the marketing world.

I’m certainly biased as someone who started a marketing company, but I strongly believe that any significant spending of marketing dollars should accompany strategic advice from a professional. Those that are worth it will be able to prove it using the results of your campaign. ❚