By Kara Brooks
What’s Inside?
- Is everyone singing the same song?
- Is your brand perception improving?
- When was the last time you refreshed your website?
- Is your social media helping to build your brand?
- Do you have a content strategy and content calendar to support it?
- How are your SEO efforts contributing to your marketing success?
Out with the old, in with the new!
As the vibrant hues of spring come into view, so too does a renewed sense of purpose—A fresh start that inspires us to clean out closets, evaluate expenses, and re-prioritize what serves us.
This couldn’t be truer for business owners, especially as Q1 comes to a close. Whether you’re assessing software licenses or thinking about the value-add of vendor relationships, it’s vital to view the metrics that matter to determine what’s working and what requires optimizing, including your marketing.
Unsure if your marketing’s actually working? Fortunately, there are several KPIs to help you evaluate the success of your campaigns. Read on to explore some essential benchmarks and strategies to determine whether your efforts are delivering your desired results.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Before assessing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, it’s crucial to establish clear and measurable goals. Whether your objective is to increase sales, generate leads, boost website traffic, or enhance brand awareness, having specific goals will provide a framework for evaluating success.
Is everyone singing the same song?
When you ask your team to share their elevator pitch, does everyone share the same message? If not, it may be time to reassess whether your messaging and value proposition are truly resonating with your two most important audiences: your internal team and your clients and partners externally.
Consistent messaging reinforces the company’s brand identity and values. By delivering the same pitch, employees help strengthen brand recognition and association in the minds of stakeholders, which can lead to greater trust and loyalty over time for your company, your products and your services. A well-crafted elevator pitch reflects positively on the professionalism and cohesion of your organization. When all employees deliver a uniform message, it demonstrates the company is organized, focused and aligned in its goals and messaging.
Perception is reality—especially when it comes to your brand, and it all starts with knowing your audience
Is your brand perception improving?
Perception is reality—especially when it comes to your brand, and it all starts with knowing your audience. Conducting market research allows you to gain insights into your target audience’s preferences, needs and perceptions, understanding where there’s alignment and misalignment with your goals for the brand. By making your customer the hero of your story, you can tailor your messaging and offerings to better resonate with and serve them.
Once your message is sound, it’s all about getting that message out clearly and consistently to increase brand awareness and visibility through digital advertising, social media, PR, content marketing, and influencer partnerships to reach your target audience effectively.
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys take the guesswork out of the game! CSATs are one of the best ways to assess how you’re tracking with your current and past customer base, from customer experience to product delivery, analyzing where you can improve your offering and identifying your raving fans through a Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures loyalty and sentiment, and adjust accordingly.
When was the last time you refreshed your website?
Your business is constantly evolving, which requires diligent work to maintain cohesion across every touchpoint, from your sales deck and proposals to your website and your social media channels. While there’s no set timetable for a full redesign of your website, most websites have a “shelf life” of 18 to 30 months, meaning you should reassess every two-to-three years to ensure your website adequately reflects your messaging, your offering and your brand.
By looking at quality web traffic metrics such as acquisition (where users are coming from), time on page, session duration (how long a user spends on your website) and conversions like form fills, you can see where your meaningful traffic is coming from, whether your content strategy is resonating with users, and whether you’re generating quality leads.
Is your social media helping to build your brand?
While brand sentiment (the overall attitude or perception users express toward your brand) can be tough to measure, there are social media stats that can help determine the effectiveness of your content across all platforms, from LinkedIn and Meta to Twitter (X) and TikTok.
- Reach refers to the total number of unique users who have seen your content
- Impressions refers to the number of times your content has appeared on users’ feeds
- Likes, shares, mentions and follower growth are all great indicators of eyeballs on your content and, thereby, awareness of your brand
The most telling metric, however, is engagement rate which measures the level of interaction users have with your content (including likes, comments, shares and clicks) relative to impressions or reach. High engagement rates suggest that your content is resonating with your audience and capturing their attention, which can indirectly contribute to increased brand awareness.
Do you have a content strategy and content calendar to support it?
Having a content strategy is crucial for driving brand awareness, attracting and engaging your target audience, generating leads and conversions, building customer relationships, differentiating your brand and achieving measurable results for your business.
You should first set KPIs that align your content goals to your business objectives:
- Website Traffic: Monitor the amount of traffic your website receives from various sources, including organic search, social media, email and referrals. Increased website traffic indicates your content is driving user engagement and interest.
- Conversion Rates: Measure the conversion rates associated with your content, such as email sign-ups, lead generation forms, downloads or purchases. Analyze how your content contributes to converting visitors into leads or customers, and identify which content types or topics are most effective at driving conversions.
- Audience Growth: Monitor the growth of your audience across various channels, including social media followers, email subscribers, and blog subscribers. A growing audience indicates that your content is attracting new followers and expanding your reach.
- Retention and Loyalty: Assess the retention and loyalty of your audience by tracking metrics such as repeat visits, time spent on site, and return visitor rate. High levels of retention and loyalty indicate that your content is valuable and engaging enough to keep users coming back for more.
How are your SEO efforts contributing to your marketing success?
SEO—or search engine optimization—refers to the keywords and phrases users type into search engines when looking for information, products or services. By incorporating relevant keywords into your content, you increase the likelihood of your website appearing in search engine results pages. A well-defined keyword strategy will help improve your website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results, driving organic traffic to your site.
By strategically incorporating keywords into your website copy, blog posts, meta tags, and other elements, you can improve the relevance and context of your content for search engines. By monitoring those keyword rankings, search volume, click-through rates, and your authority score (how reputable your website is in the eyes of search engines on a scale of 1 to 100), you can assess the effectiveness of your keyword strategy and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns for better results.
Spring into action!
Don’t let the data become daunting. As an entrepreneurial company, we understand the growth mindset in a way others don’t. Diving deep into analytics and insights, Crux partners with companies to build strategies based on evidence, not ego. We continually ask the right questions, track results and seek feedback, tapping into those insights to build agile marketing solutions that align with your vision, transforming aspirations into achievements.
Curious how your marketing is performing? Take this quick self-assessment to uncover your areas of peak performance.
