Over the past couple of months we’ve shared a series of articles on how to run successful and powerful digital marketing campaigns that can get you results. If this is your first time reading our series, take a look at Part 1 and Part 2.
In this article, we’ll drill down into two measurable goals that will enable you to focus on specific actions. These actions will deliver results that will grow your business.
Goal Type #1: Increased Sales
This is the purpose behind your marketing – to grow your revenue. Set sales goals so you can focus on measuring where your orders come from, and if those market sectors are meeting, exceeding or falling below expectations. When you know that, you can realign as needed. Decide which markets, which customer types (based appropriately for your business – on geographics, demographics and psychographics) and which products/services you are going to focus on.
Decide which campaign is delivering those results. A banner ad blitz for a particular product aimed at your ideal customer persona should bring in orders to meet your goals, if it is, you can repeat it, if it isn’t you can adjust it. You do this by setting appropriate parameters – timescale, number of ads, ad placement, cost of ad compared to order size, etc.
You should also set narrow objectives to help focus your adjustment. When you measure how many new customers respond to Banner Ad A and then buy again, compared to Banner Ad B, you can adjust accordingly. When you set SMARTER goals you can measure results and adjust in ways that will increase your campaign’s effectiveness.
Goal Type #2: Increase Participation
This kind of goal focuses on building your tribe, your following, your potential new customers and where your new orders will come from. It is where many digital marketing campaigns begin and end. To be really effective, this goal underlies and supports your increased sales goals. Raising your profile is not an end-goal, it is a contributory goal to winning more sales.
Set goals for organic traffic leads and conversions. This tells you who is drawn to your site because of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results. You must know which key words they responded to. You should measure how long they stay on your site, which pages they look at, how long they stay on them, which internal links they follow.
Measure the results of your Calls to Action. Which ones do your site visitors, social media followers and email recipients respond to? What contact data do they leave, how do they respond to your follow-up actions, etc. These actions will build your customer and your potential customer database. When you analyze the data you will know where to focus your future campaigns, so your growing tribe buys more.
Also measure your return visitors. This data tells you your level of visitor loyalty and, more importantly, your customer loyalty.
Successful digital marketing campaigns generate both new business and new customer referrals. If you have reward campaigns, you need to know who is referring new customers, why they are referring them, how frequently they do it, what those referred customers do, etc. Growing your business through referral campaigns is usually a very cost-effective marketing strategy.