How To Convince Your Boss Inbound Marketing Is Effective.
December 15, 20173 Effective Ways To Make Your Customers Smile
December 20, 2017Marketers are surrounded by data.
You’ve got your Traffic Sources reports (and more) in HubSpot, Google Analytics, etc. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Don’t forget your paid digital advertising platforms, social media monitoring services and web analytics. All these platforms have their own data analytics to assess and analyze.
Confused yet? We sure are. With so much data on hand, it’s sometimes tempting to just go “BAH and go by whatever works”. Or adopt a “set it and forget it” mentality.
Unfortunately, this is a bad idea. Analytics is vital to see if your marketing works or doesn’t work. If you don’t know how you’re doing, you won’t be able to know what to fix.
Firstly, marketing analytics is the measurement and optimization of your marketing activities. (Definition from Moz). It does not only cover web analytics, but asks the question “how did that marketing campaign really perform?”
#1: Measuring Results Allows You To Set Attainable Goals
Imagine you’re meeting a client or your boss for the first time and he/she asks you “I need 1,000 leads by next quarter”.
Now, you may feel the pressure to say yes, we definitely can deliver.
But wait, What is your basis for this 1,000 leads? How many leads were brought in last month and how much did they cost? Which industries were these leads from? How qualified were these leads?
To answer this question, you need data. Data is not your enemy. Data tells the truth about your efforts and allows you to see if a goal is attainable or what you need to get to achieve those goals.
#2: Measuring Results Allows You To Know Where To Improve
One of the perks with HubSpot is – everything is quantifiable and measurable within HubSpot. You can track everything; from the number of views on your landing pages to the conversion rates or how your forms and call-to-actions (CTAs) are doing.
Even if your website isn’t hosted directly on HubSpot, you can input a tracking code on your website to have your website results show up in HubSpot.
You can A/B test your campaigns to see if tweaking individual components of the copy, images, number of form fields or even the colour of the CTA.
#3: Measuring Results Allows You To Be Accountable To Your Boss And Marketing Budget
If you can understand where to improve your marketing efforts, you can account for your marketing budget, figure out issues and resolve them.
If your accountability is crystal-clear, it would be easier to justify your efforts to any other stakeholders or even your boss. This is why we have various reporting tools within the HubSpot dashboard.
Remember your goal as a marketer is to generate qualified leads for your sales team. Your boss needs to see that because of your marketing efforts, you are improving the company’s bottom-line. If you don’t measure your results, how can you present suitably detailed reports to justify additional efforts (or even your existence?).