How did your most recent customer discover your company? Were you reaching out to a cold calling list or did they fill out a form on your website? Were they referred by an existing customer to you or did you get the contact information after meeting them at the trade show?
Tracing the path of each lead in your business can be tricky, but understanding how each one arrives is important to help direct your marketing.
Successful marketing strategies begin with great metrics and objectives. Clear targets that follow the SMART framework can help establish the standards of performance for your efforts, from advertising to referrals to cold calling. You can begin by assessing each one of your marketing activities and establishing key metrics of performance for each of them. Creating a consistent measurement for each marketing channel will help you compare the effectiveness of each channel. For example, by measuring the number of leads each marketing channel in your company has generated, you can estimate how much of your business each channel generates.
Are your trade show visits as valuable as you think? Does it cost more to generate a lead from your trade publication ads or your google ads? An effective framework for measuring your marketing activities will help you focus your energy and resources on the activities that are generating the best results.
To get you started, below is a list of measurements you might find valuable in your marketing strategy
• Channel ROI
• Average Cost Per lead
• Cost per thousand impressions
• Average value per sale
• Average value per customer
• Lead conversion ratio
• Time to acquire lead
• Telemarketing conversion ration
• Cost per click
• Website visits per conversion