Ways To Measure The Success of Your Marketing Campaign

Marketing is the support function that ensures that your product or service reaches your consumers in a manner that achieves business objectives and reaches sales targets. This has to be done in a specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely manner. By Dimakatso Moloantoa

It is a common trap for businesses to set goals that are too high to achieve without looking at all that factors that affect the effectiveness of a campaign. The risk here is that campaigns may be deemed unsuccessful against unrealistic goals and stopped in its tracks even though they may bring enormous rewards in the long run.

Here are some steps to take to ensure that you have a successful marketing campaign:

Set clear campaign objectives

There is a saying that goes “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”. This unstructured way of running a business is filled with many little activities that are executed and the business then hopes for the best. As a support function, marketing needs to execute campaigns that sustain the overall objectives of the business.

If for example, the business objective is to increase sales by 20% year on year, a campaign needs to be designed to ensure that this objective is met. Each function of the marketing campaign must have its own objectives, i.e. social media, website, email campaigns, trade shows, events, direct mail, advertising etc.

Track and Measure all activities against their objectives

Campaigns are ever evolving processes that take into account what the reception for the campaign is from the target audience. This will ensure that all elements of the campaign are effective and that the investment made has a valuable ROI.

Some examples of how you can track and measure your campaign are:

• Conducting a Social Media Analysis to rate engagement, traffic and checking how many of the interactions you have on Social Media lead to actual sales (Cash is King!)
• Using Website Analytics will add great value on the insights you get about the success of your campaign. Use this to figure out how many of the hits you get on your website are from general searches- if you are using SEO this will help you know if you are getting the return that you need from your investment. You will also need to know if the content that you are sharing to your audience is useful and relevant to them. Knowing your bounce rate will also assist you to know what is making people switch away from your site- it may be content, speed of their network, landing on your page by mistake and a myriad of other reasons that you can counter if you know what they are.
• Event and Trade Show Analysis

READ MORE: Why You Should Invest In Marketing Your Brand

Not all events will bring you the results that you need. If a business takes part in a Trade Show to increase sales; it is very easy to see if it is successful or not- you look at the sales results. If a business takes part in an event for exposure, it will take a longer period to see the returns through cold calling and conversion after the actual event.

At the event, below are some aspects that you can measure:

Brand metrics – measure the number of impressions that your brand gets at the event (percentage of people that saw your brand ) you can also measure the number of visitors that stopped by your booth or event.

Lead generation metrics – measure the number of qualified leads met at the events and sales appointments scheduled for follow up after the event.

Marketing metrics – after the event evaluate the number of materials distributed, promotional items given away, analyze any contest of giveaways and evaluate your competitors.

Evaluate the campaign after the stated period

After a campaign, don’t just move on to the next one. Dedicate some time to see what worked, what didn’t work and what you learned from the campaign. Then implement any changes and improvements to the next campaign to make it even more successful.

Tools you can use to measure the success of a campaign include:

• RapidMiner
• Google Analytics
• Marketo
• Kissmetrics

AMARI Marketing and Communications PTY (LTD) offers comprehensive and integrated marketing solutions that are tailored for  SMME’s. You can visit them on the below platforms and contact them at marketing@amarimarketing.co.za.

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