Are you properly tracking your marketing efforts?
Are you tired of investing time and resources into marketing efforts without knowing if they’re truly paying off? It’s time to put an end to the guessing game and harness the power of data tracking. By measuring your key performance indicators (KPIs) you can see what works and what doesn’t and further optimize your marketing efforts to achieve your goals effectively.
We’ve pulled together the data points you should be tracking and a few areas where you might be spending too much time.
Where to spend your time:
- Conversion Rates: One of the most crucial metrics to track is conversion rates. It measures the percentage of people who complete a desired action after interacting with your marketing efforts. This could be anything from purchasing event tickets to signing up for a newsletter. Conversion rates provide insights into how effective your marketing campaigns are in motivating people to take action.
- Engagement Rates: Engagement rates track how much people are interacting with your content. Typically this is calculated by taking the number of engaged users by the total number and multiplying it by 100. Higher engagement rates indicate that people are interested in your content and find it valuable. Depending on your specific audience and content, some metrics you might want to track include social media shares and comments, return users on your website and email click-through rates.
- Return on Investment: Tracking your ROI helps you identify which marketing campaigns and objectives are most cost-effective and which ones may need to be adjusted or eliminated. There are two primary methods of tracking this in the marketing world: return on ad spend (ROAS) and cost per action (CPA).
ROAS measures the revenue you earn for each dollar you spend. For example, if a company spends $100 on advertising and generates $500 in revenue, the ROAS would be 5x ($500 divided by $100).
CPA, on the other hand, calculates the cost incurred for each desired action or conversion, such as a sale or donation. It takes into account the total cost associated with acquiring a customer or donor, including advertising expenses, salaries, and other costs. By dividing the total cost by the number of conversions, businesses can determine the average cost per action.
Measuring CPA might be more complex than ROAS as it considers various factors beyond advertising spend. Both ROAS and CPA provide valuable insights into the performance and efficiency of marketing efforts.
- Donor Retention: Donor retention measures how many people continue to donate to your organization after their initial gift. It’s much more cost-effective to retain donors than acquire new ones, making this metric critical for nonprofits. By tracking donor retention rates, you can identify trends and make changes to your fundraising strategies to keep donors engaged and giving.
Where you might be wasting time:
- Vanity Metrics: Metrics like overall website traffic, social media followers and email subscribers may seem impressive, but they don’t necessarily indicate marketing effectiveness. These vanity metrics should be put into context with other data to truly gauge results and determine their impact on donations or engagement. We also recommend staying focused on your own data – not the assumed data of another organization. People might tout huge numbers, but their email list might be full of unengaged contacts or they could have purchased social media followers (which you should never do!).
- Tracking Too Many Metrics: While it’s important to have a comprehensive understanding of your marketing efforts, tracking too many metrics can be overwhelming and time-consuming. It’s better to focus on a few critical metrics that are most relevant to your goals.
- Not Tracking Metrics Consistently: We’ve all been there – you open up a spreadsheet and you have to shake off the cobwebs and make lots of updates. It can be time and labor-intensive, but it’s worth keeping an eye on your KPIs so you can identify trends and make data-driven decisions. Whenever possible, create systems and rhythms for measuring your metrics regularly. Plus, when you keep up with it month after month, it’s less work than if you have to do it all at once.
Effectively optimizing your marketing efforts becomes possible when you measure and analyze what works and what doesn’t. But keep in mind, not all data is created equal, and it’s crucial to know where to focus your efforts to save time and money. Effective data tracking is a journey, not a destination. When you put in the effort to monitor, evaluate and adjust your strategies based on the insights gained from the data, you’ll see the results. You’ll also be able to show the success of your efforts with the rest of your team, including the board if you’re at a nonprofit. The entire organization benefits when you can get a handle on your data.
Connect with us to get support with your marketing strategy.
Ready to level up your marketing strategy? If you are looking to start or supplement your internal marketing needs, we are here to help. We work with our clients to set up metrics sheets to make sure they have all the tools they need to consistently track their KPIs. We’ve been there and we get how multifaceted non-profit staff are expected to be. Because of this, we strive to take the pressure off so staff can focus on their roles. We work with all sizes and budgets. Contact us.