7 Marketing Metrics to Track

Nov 09, 2015 | 5  min
author Pyxl Development
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It’s almost time to close out the books on 2015 and with that comes a whole lot of year-end reporting. Let’s walk through some marketing metrics that you should include in your reports and look ahead to what you might want to start tracking in 2016.

Depending on who you are writing your report for, whether it be your director of marketing, your CEO or your board of trustees, they probably want to know what their return on investment (ROI) was for marketing efforts in 2015. Some traditional statistics to report on include website visits, number of new contacts and revenue gains or losses. These are all important; however, there are many different ways to show success and this can vary across industries.

Let’s look at 7 marketing metrics you can track to jazz up your marketing reports.

1. Customer Acquisition Costs and Lead Acquisition Costs

Let’s get this one out of the way first. This is the one that your CEO will care most about and it’s arguably the one upon which all of your marketing budget efforts should be based. This metric looks at how much it costs to acquire a lead or a customer, taking into account all marketing expenditures over a set period of time and dividing that by the number of leads or customers acquired. HubSpot has a great blog post that explains how to calculate your customer acquisition cost (CAC). To refine this even farther, Pyxl recommends looking at your lead acquisition cost by activity, or how much it costs to acquire a lead through various methods such as social media, PPC or premium content. Knowing what your most effective—and cost efficient—activities are will allow you to better allocate your staff resources and budget in the future.

This is a relevant metric for almost any industry—whether you’re in healthcare, higher education, technology or the non-profit sector.

2. Lead to Sale Conversion Rate

How many leads are you bringing in? How long does it take to close a customer? These are questions you should be asking yourself as you determine your lead to sale conversion rate. The higher the conversion percentage, the better. It’s also a good time to look at your sales process to pinpoint any weak areas—for example, is there a point in your email workflow where you start losing a lot of leads?

This metric is especially relevant to higher education, where the “customer” is actually an incoming student. Are there certain website pages that a prospective student almost always looks at before applying? Perhaps you can promote those resources in various outlets to up your application rate. If they look at the “Student Life” page at least once before applying, try adding content from that to your social media calendar.

3. Sales Funnel

This is less of a metric and more of an illustration, but the deep analysis comes in how you present this data. A typical sales funnel shows how many leads you have in each stage of the buyer’s journey – from leads to marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales qualified leads (SQLs) to customers.

sales funnel

Rather than just reporting on how many contacts you have in each stage, take a dive into what activities you’re doing to nurture each stage. What did you do to move your top-of-the-funnel leads further down the funnel? Was it a lead nurturing email campaign? Did you create a new piece of premium content aimed at SQLs? Break out your activities and show how you’re actively working to move people down the sales funnel.

4. Website Referrals and Acquisition Channels

There are so many different elements to analyze when it comes to your website, it can be overwhelming. The two that I find most helpful for inbound marketing are website referrals and acquisition channels. Website referrals show which sites your audience is coming from when they come to your site. This is helpful to highlight influencers in your industry. If Tech Blog XYZ sends a handful of visitors to your site every month, try reaching out to them about doing a guest blog post or partnering together for a webinar. Acquisition channels look at where your traffic is coming from in broad terms, like social media, direct traffic, organic search, email marketing, etc. Knowing where your traffic is coming from will help you create a content calendar that brings in leads from the most relevant sources.

5. Campaigns

Did you run a fundraising or awareness campaign recently? Be sure to take time after the campaign ends to evaluate how effective it was, both as a whole and for individual campaign marketing activities. Look at your social media posts, blog posts, landing pages, forms and web traffic for associated pages. Pinpoint areas that performed well (e.g., a social post that drove 400 form fill-outs) and identify key takeaways to use for your next campaign. For example, if a video posted to Facebook resulted in 400 people clicking through and downloading a College Prep guide, make sure to include video content in all future campaigns.

6. Effectiveness of Premium Content

For this metric, look beyond the raw number of total downloads. Which pieces of content have higher conversions for ads on Google AdWords versus social media ads? Which ones have a higher lead-to-customer conversion rate? If a piece of premium content was doing well and then starts to underperform, check to see if it needs to be updated.

Premium content is valuable no matter what industry you’re working in, and it can be especially important in industries which require up-to-date information, such as the healthcare industry. For example, if you work for a hospital network, consider what ailments people are “googling” most, or perhaps what public health concerns are in the media, and then generate content that is aimed at answering those questions. When reporting on premium content, it’s important to show what is working, what’s not and what your future tactics are to improve your existing content as well as the plan for creating new content.

7. Brand Evangelist Score

The health of your brand is just as important as how many leads you’re bringing in. How is your brand perceived among your customers? This metric takes a bit of creativity to put together and requires a long-term view.

First, put together some survey questions that focus on keywords your evangelists might use to describe your brand, such as “I trust X Brand” or “I’ve recommended X Brand to my friends.” Questions will vary from industry to industry. If you work in the non-profit sector, you may ask questions that relate to how your brand embodies a member’s personal values, for example. Once you’ve got your core group of questions (keep the list short), regularly send out a survey to your customers to check in on how your brand is perceived. Be sure to look at new customers versus long-time customers. If your initial score is low, aim to find the areas that need improvement. Is it your customer service response time? Is your product a bit difficult to get set up, such as hospital equipment, that might require more training resources? Regularly checking the health of your brand will help you make needed adjustments and improvements.

One last thought on reporting—don’t be afraid to report on negative aspects. Oftentimes, this is where learning occurs. If your website traffic dipped by 15% in October, it’s not the end of the world. It’s an opportunity to look at what changed in your marketing activities or what might have happened within your industry to shift perceptions on a particular topic. The numbers alone aren’t enough to track—you need to pair them with your activities and show thought-leadership on future strategy.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Do you have a metric that you always include in your reports? Comment below and let us know what you think is the most important metric to track!

Updated: Apr 13, 2022

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