The last quarter of the year is upon us and, as expected, most marketers are knee-deep in working to ensure they end the year with a bang and get their marketing budget beefed up for next year.
Except…did the marketing plans for the last 3 quarters work? Did your CEO and management even look at your previous reports or, better yet, ask you for them?
If you were at the last HubSpot Tel Aviv Meetup, I’m sure you left with valuable insights as to why your weekly or monthly marketing report was not the most sought-after company document. If you missed the event, you’re in luck: we’ll be publishing a summary of each speaker’s presentation over the next few weeks.
WHY no one cares about Your weekly marketing report
This blog post is based on the presentation of our first speaker, Udi Ledergor, a 4- time VP Marketing and best-selling author, who showed us exactly why our marketing plan and subsequent report was falling on deaf ears. We simply were not aligning our activities to the company’s objectives - and furthermore, we’re spending too much time tracking vanity metrics such as open rates, click-through rates and number of visitors to our website.
According to Ledergor, although these stats do matter in the bigger picture, to get the attention of our bosses, we need to do the following:
1. DIFFERENTIATE YOUR BUSINESS GOALS FROM MARKETING GOALS
An obvious but often overlooked point by marketers is firstly understanding the business goals of their company. For example, how many new customers does your company need to attract by the end of the year in order to meet its revenue goals is the main concern of your CEO, not how many people visited the website last month.
Once these business goals are clearly understood, the next step is to define what the marketing goal should be in order to achieve this business goal.
For example, if your company’s business goal is to close 30 new customers by the end of the year, your marketing goal may then be to attract 3,000 visitors to your website who will eventually turn into 300 marketing MQLs (marketing qualified leads), then 100 SQL (sales qualified leads) and finally trickle down into 30 customers.
2. DEFINE MARKETING ACTIVITIES
Defining the marketing activities that will help you achieve each of the marketing goals as outlined in the example above is the next crucial step.
For instance, to attract 3,000 website visitors you can invest in Google remarketing, and to convert them into 300 marketing leads you can create premium content such as white papers or eBooks. Some of these leads will hopefully turn into SQLs (sales qualified leads) after attending a webinar or specific event you hosted. Eventually through these activities, some of these SQLs will become customers.
3. MEASURE YOUR EFFORTS
At this point, you will want to measure your results - but as Ledergor advises, although the vanity metrics are useful in providing the overall picture, it’s important to dig a bit deeper.
For instance, additional metrics such as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Cost Per Marketing/Sales Lead, how much revenue can be directly attributed to marketing, what effect your marketing activities have on sales productivity, and any other KPIs that help your CEO see that he’s getting value from the marketing department are invaluable to your report.
Always ask the question, “How are my marketing activities helping the company close a sale?” The answer should then appear in your weekly or monthly report.
4. TAKE THE ANALYSIS ONE STEP FURTHER
It’s often tempting to hand in your weekly or monthly report with the analysis previously discussed - but it’s vital that you include these 3 results dimensions to give your report true value.
Make sure to examine:
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Your results in absolute terms as described above (e.g., how many leads were generated in this email campaign)
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Your results over time by comparing your results to previous similar campaigns (e.g., did last week’s email campaign generate more or fewer leads?)
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Your results compared to other channels and campaigns (e.g., how many leads were generated from a comparable investment in a trade show last month?)
Below is a cheat sheet for the items you need to consider including when building your marketing report. Using this as a guideline will ensure that your marketing report no longer gets ignored.
To view Udi's full presentation click HERE. For more information or help on building your next report contact us.
by The Penguin Team on October 02, 2016
As a leading B2B digital marketing agency, We help B2B Technology Companies, enterprise software, and hardware companies increase brand awareness, reach more qualified leads and close more customers. Penguin Strategies is a Diamond Partner of HubSpot.
