How to Measure Success of Your Marketing Campaigns?

In my last article, we discussed what is a Marketing Campaign? and the different types of marketing campaigns. A well-executed marketing campaign has multiple moving elements, that determine the success or failure of that specific marketing campaign.

One main campaign with an overarching objective of generating more leads may have multiple sub-campaigns (could be different platforms, different timelines, audience segmented, etc.). Does the failure of one sub-campaign impact the overall objective?

In this article, I’ll list down the different components and metrics, and explain how to use them to measure the success of your marketing campaign.

Components of a marketing campaign

There are 4 main components of a successful marketing campaign:

• Define goals and KPIs
• Audience segmentation
• Channel and tactic
• Formating and design
• Measurement and reporting

Define Goals and KPIs

Before jumping into the planning and strategy, you must be clear about what you want to accomplish from this campaign? Your answer to this question will define the type of your marketing campaign. Once that part is clear, you need to define SMART goals that will help you prove the impact of the campaign while acknowledging your’s and your team’s efforts.

What are SMART goals?

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-sensitive

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to consider while setting goals:

• Website metrics:
  • Traffic to landing page
  • Traffic per channel
  • Bounce rate
  • Avg. time on Page
  • Engagement rate
  • Pageviews
  • Pages per Session (pages per visit)
  • Video views
  • Completed video views

• Lead generation metrics:
  • Total leads
  • Qualified leads
  • Leads per channel
  • Meetings scheduled
  • Subscriptions generated
  • Cost-per-lead

• Engagement KPIs:
  • Impressions
  • Engagements
  • CPM
  • CPC

• Email performance KPIs:
  • Opens
  • Clicks
  • Open rate
  • Click-through-rate (CTR/CTDR)

Auidence Segmentation

Knowing who your customers are is paramount to the success of any campaign. Understanding what stage your customer is in the buying funnel, knowing who they are, what challanges they are trying to solve, where they search for solutions – will help you create target audience segments and drive your next steps.

Channel and Tactic

Based on your audience segmentation and your campaign objecttives, you can identify channels and tactics for your campaign. Ask yourseflf what are the top 3 channels your customers are active in? Now plan your approch accordingly. You can pick one or two channel at a time and start small.

You can start with SEM, Social media (paid and organic), Paid display ads, and all these should be supported by a strong and well planned email marketing.

Formating and Design

Your delivery method could make or break your entire campaign. Most brands use more than one way of content delivery. This helps them measure the impact and adopt to changes based on audience reactions. Social media, blog posts, articles, newletters, video content are few examples. No matter what content delivery process you select, the user experiece should be seemless throughout.

Staying consistance in your approach makes it easier for a brand to get spotted and recognized in the crowd, and increases the chances of generating more revenue.

Measurement and Reporting

Continues tracking and analysis through out the campaign lifecycle will helps test, optimize and react to any changes in near real-time. Actively measuring your marketing campaigns will potentially save you a lot of money and maximize your ROI on marketing efforts.

There are several tools you can use for continues measurement and reporting. Few of the popular tools are:

• Website and App measurement and reporting
  • Google Analytics
  • Abobe Analytics
  • Mixpanel

• Email automation and reporting
  • Marketo
  • MailChimp
  • HubSpot
  • Omnisend
  • Drip

• Social media
  • Meta Business Suite
  • LinkedIn campaign manager
  • Hootsuite

• Advance reporting and analytics
  • R and Python
  • Tablue
  • Microsoft Power BI
  • QlikView

Conclusion

In many companies, the marketing teams are not considered as direct revenue generating parts. Hence it is essential for these teams to setup and define a complete end-to-end marketing camapign blueprint that highlights the importance and impact of marketing efforts and justifies the right share in the firms overall ROI. A successful marketing campaign is only possible if you follow the steps and set clear expectations. Starting small and scaling is good, but trying to do it all does not always pan out for most companies.