Last week we shared the two most important measurements for judging a successful marketing effort. Today we want to share three important measurements that marketing should use to judge progress towards:
- Increasing the lifetime value of a customer, and
- Decreasing the cost of acquiring a customer.
Engagement
While marketing departments often measure awareness, they rarely measure engagement. Why? Because measuring it is hard. Engagement is all about interaction and connection. It measures your marketing investment in you and your brand. It’s one thing to “like” your Facebook page, it’s another to comment on the page or to contribute. Broadcast mechanisms do little to support engagement. It’s far better to find ways to allow you customers and prospects to participate and experience your brand.
Sales Progression
Marketing’s job is to set the stage for the sale, yet everyday we’ll sit with a company and ask them to outline the progression for creating a customer. While we’ll get a soliloquy and lots of philosophy, we rarely get a clear diagram of a process. This makes it virtually impossible to optimize your marketing investments. You need to map the progression and highlight how your marketing efforts support each milestone.
Sales Costs
Simply put, marketing should make selling easier, and that shows up in the cost line. Sales cycle times should be shorter, managing the complexity should be less complex and whatever means is used for making the sale (salespeople, website, etc.) should be able to handle a higher volume.
When you align your marketing efforts to these measurements, you’ll unlock the latent value we find in virtually every company we meet.