Measuring the outcomes of marketing efforts is an essential, but often overlooked, task for small business owners.

By Emma Miller

Success has to be measured to be confirmed and for new goals to be set. Every process and every goal, every task and every marketing campaign, all of these efforts would be for nothing if you do not employ a measuring method that will bring the fruits of your creativity to light and give you invaluable information that will allow your small business to move forward and build success.

Here are the most effective, proven ways to measure your marketing efforts and act on the hard facts.

ROI metrics and analytics

Establishing a clear and precise way to measure and analyze the flow of your investments and marketing efforts is the most important aspect of long-term success. Luckily, you can implement numerous contemporary solutions, such as a saas magic number calculation, traffic analytics tools, conversion metrics tools, as well as website, SEO and social media analytics.

Even before you put your brand on the market, you need to run thorough research to get the best possible results with minimal subsequent investments, after which you will introduce these metric analytics tools to get invaluable information on what to improve and which course to take.

Acquisition channels

With a myriad of acquisition channels available for acquiring new leads and boosting traffic, you must track and measure each of them to figure out which channels have the highest conversion rates, which generate the most leads and which create the most loyal customer base.

These channels include blog posts, partnerships, paid ads across social media platforms, organic search criteria, press releases, SEO and SEM efforts, email marketing and more. Never underestimate the power of an acquisition channel and try to employ as many of them as possible to help you reach your goals.

Inbound leads

Inbound marketing refers to attracting customers and pulling them towards your brand to experience it and fall in love with it, rather than trying to push your product or service towards the consumers, which is an outbound strategy. Your inbound marketing efforts are supposed to showcase your brand in the best possible light, by using various engaging channels, such as email correspondence, your brand’s stories and images, interactive and engaging website design, and the content you create.

Always remember that, for people to feel like a part of your story, they need to fall in love with your values, messages and brand personality. The way to effectively measure your inbound efforts is to monitor the results that every piece of content produces – after which you can improve where needed.

Customer engagement and lifetime value

You can achieve your marketing goals and produce valuable, engaging content at the same time, by running and measuring engagement campaigns that are focused on experimenting with and bringing impactful and valuable information to people and establishing personal communication with your customers based on behavioral data.

Additionally, you should devote your attention to measuring and improving your LTV or “customer lifetime value” goals. Establishing an LTV for each customer type and demographic is one of the most efficient ways to predict and generate long-term net value attributed to establishing a relationship with your brand followers.

Surveys

Conducting in-depth, thorough surveys is another highly effective ways to measure and experiment with the results of your marketing campaigns, both inbound and outbound. People are constantly exploring how to get paid online, and online surveys have proven to be one of the best options for companies and customers alike.

Online surveys yield the best cost-effective results, as nowadays you can have dedicated survey websites that give you invaluable data without the need for you to organize and conduct the surveys yourself, allowing people to answer your questions from home, at their convenience, and earn money at the same time.

Data collection

Data is a crucial component of success measurement and improvement, and by collecting invaluable data and working it in around your goals, you can improve and adjust your processes to increase the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts. Track and assess how many calls, emails and meetings it takes for your team to close a deal with a client or customer and work that to match your goals.

For instance, if you need three phone calls and one email to schedule a meeting, and two meetings to close a deal, then that equates to thirty phone calls, ten emails and twenty meetings a month to close ten clients on a monthly basis.

Your marketing efforts are an investment in long-term success and growth and for them to bare fruit and allow your business to thrive in the competitive market, you need to measure and effectively act on the results of your campaigns. With these proven measurement tactics, you can ensure exponential business growth for years to come.

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Emma Miller is a marketer and a writer from Sydney. Her focuses are digital marketing, social media, start-ups and latest trends. She’s a contributor at Bizzmark blog. Bizzmarkblog.com