To run any successful marketing operation, you’ll need to know how to measure your success. There are a few reasons for this – you’ll want to identify what’s working to continue improving your results, as well as strengthening your future pitches with demonstrable results. Here are some suggestions on how to ensure that what you’re measuring will make a difference to your campaign.
Choose your objective
The most common marketing campaign objectives can be attributed to the Marketing Funnel. So identifying who you want to attract or the message you want to push out is the most important step.
Objectives are usually around these three key points:
- Building brand awareness (upper funnel)
- Driving consideration or intent (middle funnel)
- Conversion / leads (bottom funnel)
Once you’ve identified your objective, it’ll make it easier for you to choose your metrics.
Identify key metrics
Keeping track of your results depends on a number of factors, starting with deciding which metrics are important to your operation. Deciding which metrics to track isn’t always obvious – some are essential, and others are more for vanity purposes. It goes without saying that you’ll need to know the difference between the two.
Establish key performance indicators specific to your objective. If you’re pushing towards brand awareness and consideration, you’re going to want to see lots of views, impressions, high click-through rates and engagement rates. All of these metrics allow you to see how often your campaign is being seen and how often it’s being engaged with, meaning you have a good idea of what’s working and what’s not.
If you want to drive leads and conversions, you’ll want to measure conversion rate, cost per conversion and the amount of leads you have coming in. Again, once you know your campaign’s objective, it’ll be easier for you to identify the key metrics that are right for you.
Setting up a reporting tool
Once you know which metrics you want to track, you’ll want to set up an easy-to-read home for these statistics to live on. This can be via HubSpot, Salesforce, or any other tool you or your company is using. Depending on the type of campaign you’re running, a great way to do this is via Google Analytics, which every colleague working on the campaign has access to. That way, everyone on the team can more easily align themselves to the goal of the campaign, and see what is and isn’t working without spending time on a meeting.
Measure results in real-time
Now comes the difficult part. Once you’ve established your goals and set up a method of tracking them, you’ll need to be diligent about monitoring them. Checking on your Google Analytics dashboard (or whichever tool you use) will tell you at a glance if one of your pages is down, or if one is experiencing more traffic than usual.
Monitoring these results will not only help you identify technical issues, but will also give you an insight into how your content is being received by the audience. If the results are lower than expected or declining, it’s time to take action.
Test different creatives
Marketing is a game of trial and error. Marketers are constantly trying things out and seeing what works, so don’t be afraid of changing course if you’re not getting the results you hoped for. The beauty of online marketing is that changes and corrections can be made instantly, so try out different creative approaches where possible.
This could be as simple as updating a call-to-action or changing a product description, or it may require an entirely new approach to your marketing. Make small changes first before you start throwing out existing campaigns – you may still be able to get some success from your current campaign.
Analyse your results
The final stage of your journey should be to analyse the data that you have collected. Elements like call-to-actions and product descriptions can make a big difference to results, so be sure to use a cross-cutting system to single out which elements are working and which aren’t.
When you’ve settled on your results, collate everything into a single document and hone in on the successes and failures of the campaign. Establish your starting point by making a note of your KPI’s on your initial campaign, as this will allow you to see and report on growth as you go forward. Keep in mind that perfecting your system won’t happen overnight – it will take weeks, months or even years to achieve the results you’re after, and you’ll need to be diligent and dedicated to the task.
To get yourself on the fast track to the results you want, why not say hello to Project N’s marketing team? No matter what section of the gaming space you’re part of, we can help you create the right content for your brand and deliver it to the right audience, in the most effective way possible.