It’s the age-old struggle for marketers – measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your activities and campaigns. The struggle comes in part because it’s difficult to relate concepts like brand awareness directly to sales. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to monitor and measure your marketing and prove its worth. After all, if you don’t measure, how do you know what’s working?

<b>Steps for meaningful data</b>
<ol>
 	<li>define your metrics and develop a plan</li>
 	<li>collect the data</li>
 	<li>develop reporting guidelines</li>
 	<li>analyse and change as needed</li>
</ol>
Collecting and analysing meaningful data is about more than finding tools and interpreting charts. It’s about <b>valuing the data</b> and understanding how it can help <b>justify and grow your hard work and campaigns</b>.

There are several tools that will help you measure your marketing data, and <b>Google analytics</b> is probably the most helpful – it’s also free. Bonus!

<b>What we look for</b>

When measuring our campaigns for clients, we look at <b>engagement</b> and <b>growth</b>.

<b>Engagement</b>

Starting with content performance, it’s helpful to measure social shares on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (shares equal love!), and then check your blog and website for bounce rates and visit time. Facebook and Twitter have built-in analytics tools that will help you here. On your website and blog, use Google analytics. High bounce rates and short visits usually mean your audience isn’t finding what they thought they would, or they’re not as engaged as they should be with your content. Pages per visit is another interesting content measure – if visitors are clicking around your site, they’re liking what they find and you’re getting more exposure. Nice work!

A specific example of measuring engagement in action can be found in our My Smoking quit smoking campaign. It was targeted at men and women aged 18–29 across TV, radio, print and digital. Data showed that:
<ul>
 	<li>8 in 10 young smokers supported the campaign</li>
 	<li>76% contemplated quitting because of the campaign</li>
 	<li>50% reported cutting down on cigarettes because of the campaign</li>
 	<li>47% tried quitting</li>
</ul>
Imagine being able to prove your campaign success to your team and managers? We do it from the start with our work. Do you?

<b>Growth</b>

For growth in marketing, it all starts with click-throughs on your call to action. If your analytics tell you they’re low, then you need to change up your content. Look at the words you’re using, how your e-marketing looks, your subject line on EDMs and even the specific call to action.

Other growth indicators will see you linking up with your sales team to measure metrics like how many leads your content is bringing in and turning into customers, cost per lead, average sales cycle duration and revenue per user. Always remember that increasing customer retention is the aim for the sales cycle, too. These things are tougher to measure, but good lead generation processes are a big help, and we find having campaign measurement expectations in place right from the start will make things much easier.

A terrific example of analysing the performance and growth of our work was for our client the Chamber of Commerce &amp; Industry Queensland (CCIQ). A review of their key communication channels saw us creating a monthly e-zine to better engage members. As a result of our work, we measured that CCIQ got 3,350 new subscribers in 5 months, grew website traffic by 161% to 76,277 visitors over six months, had 4,171 qualified leads generated over six months and a 110% increase in revenue in a single month. Impressive figures that not only lead to successful relationships with clients, but to high-achieving campaigns and ongoing work. We’re proving what we do is working.

Have a chat with us today about your marketing and we’ll have you measured up in no time.