In the minds of many industrial leaders, marketing is associated with a cost center, designed solely to improve brand awareness and image. Be aware that this is completely false.
On the other hand, there is no smoke without fire... Too often, marketing actions are carried out on a whim, without any real strategy or measurement of their effectiveness. However, there are dozens of relevant indicators to consider when determining whether or not a campaign is successful. Furthermore, with the advent of digital marketing, lead tracking is much more accurate than it was a few years ago. It is now possible to track your prospects to find out whether customer X initially found you via the web or whether it was email Y that triggered a request for a quote. In short, let's take a quick look at the main indicators to follow.
1) Web indicators
A central place in your digital marketing strategy, the website is full of all kinds of dataHere, the risk is rather that get lost in the intricacies of Google Analytics or Search Console. It is best, at least initially, to focus on the following KPIs, in order to monthly, or even weekly :
- Number of sessions
- Number of new visitors
- Traffic distribution
- Bounce rate
- Average session duration
- Number of pages viewed per session
- Most visited pages
- Pages with the highest bounce rate
This list is obviously not exhaustive, but it will give you a good overview of your website's health. The most interesting thing, of course, is to track this data over the months and ensure it continues to improve.
2) Communication indicators
A quick reminder: communication has business value and therefore benefits from its own indicators. Here are what we consider to be the main communication KPIs by channel:
- Email campaigns
- Deliverability rate
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Churn rate
- Social media
- Number of subscribers to your page
- Number of likes
- Number of shares
- Number of comments
- Reactions to posts shared by employees within their networks
- Press relations
- Number of news briefs
- Number of items
- Sharing these different publications
- Mentions of your company name
- Webinars / Videos
- Number of subscribers to your channel or webinar
- Number of views per video
- Number of webinar replays viewed
- Reactions following these viewings
Here again, the list could be considerably longer, but the aim is not to create a catalog, so we will stop there 🙂
3) Commercial indicators
The crux of the matter! These are the indicators that will ultimately convince the entire company (or at least the sales force) of the merits of marketing initiatives. Please note: some are only applicable to marketing strategies that are already well advanced.
- Number of visitors identified in the marketing automation software
- Number of digital resource downloads
- Number of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) generated
- Number of remaining SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads)
- Number of signatures among SQLs
- Average basket
- Decision cycle duration
For this part, we recommend two different measures: one focused on leads identified in marketing campaigns and another that is more comprehensive. This will allow you to determine whether the actions implemented have a broader impact than what was calculated.
4) The feelings of employees and customers
Finally, there is no long list of specific indicators. Here, we are mainly talking about feelings. How your customers perceive communication campaigns, the new website, the value-added content offered to them, etc. The same applies internally: these actions may help break down certain silos and unite teams with a customer-centric approach ?
Of course, it is always possible to quantify this with a satisfaction survey conducted every six months or annually, but it is essential to keep a constant finger on the pulse. This is also the best way to adjust certain actions if necessary, as part of a continuous improvement process, to increase your sales even further!
