Top 3 Marketing Decision Metrics

With the endless resources available to analyze data in today’s market, it becomes easy to develop “paralysis by analysis”. There are so many tools available to create data, but how much of this data is really relevant to your business marketing campaigns?  Having too much data can muddy up your decision making process as much as not having enough data can have you spending money blindly.  The more data you have the harder it becomes to know what to do with that data and how to use it to your benefit.

For marketing purposes there is an endless supply of data and having all this data sounds compelling.  To make things worse, many marketing companies will throw out data that looks impressive but may be insignificant to your decision-making process.  In reality, focusing on a few important pieces of data is enough to help you make sound marketing decisions. If you feel like you are getting lost in metrics and data, try to focus on the most important ones. 

Here are the three key pieces of data that will  help you analyze your marketing campaigns and aid you in fine-tuning those campaigns to maximize success.

• Cost Per Lead (CPL).  This metric is exactly what it sounds like, it tells you how much it is costing you to get new leads.  This metric is used for your paid marketing campaigns since organic traffic doesn’t technically incur a cost. With organic leads you’re paying for content and SEO strategies. To generate this metric you simply divide your total marketing costs by the number of leads generated.   TOTAL MARKETING COSTS/ # OF LEADS GENERATED

• Lead Conversion Rate (LCR).  This metric helps you determine how many leads become clients.  If your LCR is lower on one campaign versus another then your ad needs to be changed or you need to target a different audience. Conversely, if your LCR is low on most of your ad campaigns then you need to assess how efficient your sales team or customer staff are at converting leads.

• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This metric will show you how much gross revenue your ad or marketing campaign is generating.  To generate this metric you simply divide total revenue generated from clients of this campaign by the total marketing costs.   (REVENUE GENERATED/ TOTAL AD SPEND) X 100

Using these three key metrics will give you all the information you need to determine whether your ads and marketing campaigns are successful or not.