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How to Measure Success of your Marketing Campaigns (Tips from 60+ Experts)
Measure the success of your marketing campaigns and determine which tactics are most effective at driving qualified leads and revenue.
Measuring the success of your campaigns is essential for understanding the impact of your efforts and making data-driven decisions.
But, with so many metrics and tools available, it can be challenging to determine which ones are the most valuable for your business.
As a marketing attribution provider, we want to help you make your marketing measurement more seamless.
So, we asked sales and marketing leaders across various industries for their best marketing measurement tips and tricks.
For this article, we’ll cover:
💡 Pro Tip
Marketing measurement is hard, but tools like Ruler make it much easier. Ruler is an attribution and MMM tool that attributes revenue back to your marketing touchpoints across multiple sessions and sources. Don’t let your marketing efforts go unmeasured. Book a demo and see how Ruler can prove the value of your marketing campaigns.
Get your free demo of Ruler
Measuring marketing effectiveness is used by professionals to analyse and describe the efficiency and impact of marketing.
Related: Complete guide to measuring marketing effectiveness
It’s both an essential and valuable process.
The goal of almost any organisation is to earn or increase revenue.
However, many marketers are making the mistake of using high-level, vanity metrics across their campaigns to determine marketing effectiveness.
While vanity metrics offer some value, it’s impossible to define the success of your marketing by just looking at metrics such as traffic, clicks and conversions.
In reality, your company executives (or clients) don’t care about how many leads your latest campaign produced.
They want to know which lead sources generate the most revenue and how marketing is moving the needle on wider company goals.
Related: How to definitively prove your marketing ROI
When you effectively measure marketing effectiveness, you can observe what works and what doesn’t.
You can better evaluate performance, track where your leads and sales are coming from, and spot areas of improvement.
Chris Pentell, Founder and Director at LifeUpswing, believes that: “If you aren’t tracking your marketing, you have no chance of understanding your business.”
Despite the importance of measuring marketing effectiveness, there are still two out of ten marketers who have no reporting in place or are only just getting started.
There’s no single right way to create a marketing report or how frequently you should measure the success of your campaigns.
It all depends on a variety of factors, such as your timeframe, specific goals and objectives.
Related: A complete guide to digital marketing reports
However, when surveyed, 32% of companies reported that they track campaign success once a month, while 43% measure performance at least once a week.
Nearly half of the people we surveyed measure and report on marketing effectiveness at least once a week.
Weekly reports are a great short-term waypoint to check in and allow you to stay on top of opportunities or issues that may suddenly arise.
Kristin Stump, Marketing Manager at My Enamel Pins, agrees: “For a more accurate analysis of your marketing campaign, you should measure it once a week. With this, you can make necessary improvements frequently.”
While there are some metrics that make more sense to track frequently, spending time explaining results to your company executives or clients every week can turn into a lengthy and time-consuming process.
It’s for that reason why 32% of marketers prefer to opt for monthly reporting. Not only that, but monthly reporting allows you to identify larger patterns in your data.
“Measuring the success of marketing campaigns truly only needs to be done once per month,” says Lisa Cutter, Social Media Director at Amp Up My Biz. “Reporting should include not only the monthly data but also month-over-month and year-over-year analytics comparisons. This allows you to see trends and identify what’s working so you can do more of it.”
💡 Pro Tip
Follow Katie on LinkedIn for tips and tactics on attribution, analytics and all things digital marketing. Don’t forget to say hi. 👋
To learn more about the best practices and tools needed to measure and evaluate marketing effectiveness, we asked dozens of experts in the sales and marketing space to weigh in and share their input.
“Long before your campaign is launched, you need to set yourself up for success. You must determine how you’ll measure your campaign and define success,” says Lee Grant, CEO at Wrangu.
The first step in measuring marketing effectiveness is to set the right goals, either for an individual campaign or overall objective.
It’s impossible to measure and track campaign success if there aren’t any clear and specific goals to meet, right?
CEO at Translation Equipment HQ, Will Ward, agrees: “For us, the most important step in analysing marketing campaign success is setting clear, precise and aligned objectives.”
Will adds, “We’ve learned the hard way that although there might be huge potential in a given objective, success in both analysis and outcome depends on our objectives aligning perfectly with our goals, in both the short and long term. So working hard on setting clear objectives is important for us.”
With the right goals in place, you can easily track and measure how each campaign is performing and gain powerful insights to tailor your marketing strategy—but where do you start?
Summer Romasco, Marketing Director at Ad Hoc Labs, suggests starting by asking yourself the following questions: “Who are you attempting to reach, and how? What content are you using to complete your aims? What pieces need to be created, and which are ready to go? Who’s onboard, and who needs to be?”
“Tracking a marketing campaign starts with selecting the right tools for your goals,” says Scott Keever, Founder at Scott Keever SEO.
To successfully measure your marketing effectiveness, you’ll need to invest in a solution that can help you compare and analyse your campaigns.
You’re probably familiar with popular tools like Google Analytics and Facebook ad manager.
But, there are so many more options that can help you track your campaigns and better understand your leads and customers.
While there are many solutions that can capture and analyse your campaign data, the truth is there’s no single tool that meets every need. The tools you choose will depend on your specific goals.
Herbert Rigs, CEO at UnscrambleX, agrees: “The marketing tools you use to assess the performance of your campaigns are determined by the goal you’re aiming for.”
Most companies, however, do share the same goal of wanting to increase revenue.
When it comes to tracking which marketing channel is converting the most leads and driving the most revenue, you’re going to want an attribution tool.
Attribution tools are perfect for marketers looking to prove the impact of their campaigns and want to double down on what’s actually working to drive revenue.
Take Ruler, for example.
Ruler is a marketing measurement tool that helps marketers track and analyse customer journeys across multiple touchpoints.
It takes the best of multi-touch attribution and marketing mix modeling to enable companies to connect their marketing activities to revenue.
Ruler does this by tracking the source of leads and attributing conversions to specific campaigns, keywords and ads.
With Ruler, you can:
“Ruler has allowed us to streamline our entire digital dashboard by allowing us to track goals more relevant to our business,” says Stephen Taylor, Head of Digital at Totalmobile.
💡 Pro Tip
Ready to uncover the true impact of your marketing campaigns? Book a demo and see how Ruler can justify your costs and prove your ROI by attributing revenue back to your marketing sources.
Get your free demo here
“To track our marketing campaigns and the success of them, we’ll track specific KPIs,” says Teri Shern, Co-Founder at Conex Boxes. “Using these KPIs, and comparing them to other campaigns, allows us to determine how well our marketing is doing and what techniques seem to work best for our leads.”
Once you’ve set your goals and picked your tools, you’ll need to decide what key performance indicators you’ll need to monitor your marketing campaign effectiveness.
Without KPIs, you’d have little to no understanding of your success rate, and you’d risk losing focus on what matters most to your business.
Related: Measuring the marketing KPIs that matter
Gerrid Smith, CMO at Joy Organics, believes: “Having the right metrics to measure your marketing effectiveness can help you make better sense of your data and make necessary improvements.”
With so many KPIs available, how do you choose the best ones to define the success of your marketing?
In all honesty, it depends.
There are many factors to consider when implementing KPIs. If you’re stuck, we have a guide on marketing KPIs that provides plenty of tips for finding the perfect fit.
You know the phrase. All things must come to an end.
This also applies to your marketing campaigns. Once you set goals and key performance indicators, you must establish a time frame.
Time frames, or deadlines, keep you focused and create accountability. They provide a sense of urgency and propel you to take the necessary steps to reach your initial goals and objectives.
Nikolay Krastev, SEO specialist at Agile Digital Agency, agrees: “It doesn’t matter if you have five days or five months to work on your campaign. You will feel a sense of accomplishment and urgency by setting a time frame for your digital marketing campaign.”
“Campaigns need to be checked upon frequently in order to track progress towards the objective and make ongoing adjustments,” says Cristian Ungureanu, Senior Growth Manager at QuickMail. “It depends on the type of campaign, but I check my campaigns multiple times a week, and I often find improvements.”
Once you’ve established your timeframe, you can start to assign checkpoints to gauge your progress along the way.
Chief Editor at Kitchen Infinity, Dean Scaduto, agrees: “It’s essential to keep track of and evaluate your marketing efforts frequently to see if they’re yielding the expected results, such as greater sales.”
The frequency at which you schedule your progress reviews depends on your goals and what you’re trying to achieve with your marketing campaigns. However, we suggest setting more checkpoints in the initial stages of your campaign.
This will allow you to iron out any kinks and see what’s working well. When you’re confident your campaign is running at full capacity, you can start to schedule progress reviews less frequently.
You’ve set your goals, metrics and found a tool to capture your marketing data, but what next?
To make sense of your data and extract meaningful and actionable insights, you might want to consider using a marketing dashboard.
With a marketing dashboard, you can easily collect important information about your campaigns and share key insights with your company executives and/or clients.
Brian Dean, Founder at Exploding Topics, agrees: “The best place to collect and evaluate campaign data is in a marketing dashboard. You can create a marketing dashboard that visualises your campaign performance using your KPIs and priority indicators.”
He added, “It’s critical to check the dashboard at regular intervals. It’s best to check in on ongoing campaigns regularly, quarterly, and annually as a rule of thumb.
“Benchmarking gives useful context, allowing you to create relevant goals, gain insight into market trends, and see how you stack up against your competitors,” Alex Uriarte, Personal Injury Attorney at 1-800 Injured.
Benchmarking your marketing performance allows you to capitalise on growth opportunities and spot areas for improvement.
More importantly, you can gain a competitive advantage and set more meaningful and achievable targets for your campaigns.
Kathy Bennett, CEO & Founder at BPKC, usually begins with past data at hand. “We compare it with previous statistics, which is conditioned to make sure the comparison is authentic. This then goes to the research team that analyses the entire cycle and helps us gain a picture of how fruitful a particular campaign has been,” added Kathy.
💡 Pro Tip
Starting a new campaign and don’t have any past performance data?
We sampled the Ruler global database, which has over 100 million data points to distinguish the average conversion, call and form rate across fourteen industries. Download the report, to see performance breakdowns by industry and gain a snapshot of which marketing channels are performing well for your competitors.
Download the conversion rate benchmark report
CEO & Founder at The Art of Business, Amanda Nelson, also starts with benchmarking past performance or marketing actions across all online channels.
“We talk with the client about their measurements of success (what would a successful campaign look like for them). Then, we prioritise and put a plan together based on the past data and the client’s ultimate goals,” Amanda added.
When surveyed, 68% of respondents reported using a CRM to hold their lead and marketing data.
A CRM is a vital tool for measuring marketing and sales effectiveness.
It can help you organise, connect and track all your data collected along the path of a specific lead and/or customer.
Most CRMs have functions and processes you can put in place that allow you to view important KPIs in one single place.
Daniela Sawyer, Founder & Business Development Strategist at Find People Fast, agrees: “CRM platforms are more effective for managing our prospecting and sales activities. However, when it comes to tracking marketing initiatives, they can be pretty helpful. In most situations, we can filter or sort our prospects by campaign ID, lead source, or referral program, giving us real-time insight into the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.”
Related: How to attribute marketing lead source in your CRM
There are many CRM solutions available that you can choose to measure your marketing effectiveness. However, the most familiar and recognisable are Salesforce, HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics.
Related: The role of CRM in marketing [+ how to get more data on your leads]
Brett Larkinsent, CEO at Uplifted Yoga, uses Salesforce to measure marketing results, including metrics for specific campaigns. “I find it an unbeatable tool.
Each campaign I set has very clear objectives, including where I expect to see growth through lead generation, conversions, and so on.” Brett added.
“Another sure-shot way of measuring your success would be to check your online feedback,” says David Northup, CEO at InShapeMD. “Incorporating customer feedback on your campaign is integral as not only can it be used to measure its success, but it can be utilised for future campaigns.”
Regularly checking feedback is crucial. You can better understand the features and products that make your audience tick and optimise your campaigns to drive more profitable leads and sales.
Manager at Tiger Supplies, Felix Maberly, also suggests: “Monitoring the responses of your customers.”
Felix added: “If the sales of your competition are decreasing and you experience an increase, it’s likely your marketing campaign was a success.”
If you’re new to marketing measurement and goal setting, start small. It’ll be a lot easier to measure the progress of your campaigns and amend accordingly.
COO at Leaf Gutter Guard, Herman Hibbert, agrees: “Some companies become enthusiastic and want to launch a large-scale campaign. It’s enticing, but you risk having a fragmented campaign.”
Herman continues: “We recommend beginning small with a modest, smart campaign. You’ll be able to observe what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve without spending your entire budget.”
“Paying attention to metrics has never been easier. Building a system that includes the most important digital marketing indicators cannot be accomplished in a week or even a month. It’s a project that needs to be updated regularly,” says Tanner Arnold, President & CEO at UnscrambleX.
So, your campaign is running at full speed, and you may feel like the job is done.
It’s tempting to take your foot off the pedal.
But without constantly testing and fine-tuning your approach and KPIs, you run the risk of leaving money on the table.
There’s always room for improvement, and continually testing and adapting new ideas will ultimately get you better performance.
Omer Riaz, CEO at Urtasker, suggests testing with two or more different ads with the same objective.
“When the ads are live, we start monitoring each campaign, ad copy, and element such as average CTR, CPC, Ad Rank, Bid rates, etc. We make changes to campaigns while testing and as time passes to ensure enough data exists to base results,” says Omer.
Michelle Devani, Founder at lovedevani, concludes this for us: “Measuring and analysing marketing campaigns is delicate. But it’s exciting to see the growth of the company with the help of marketing campaigns.”
We hope you’ve learned a little more about measuring campaign success and can use this knowledge to improve your marketing efforts in the future.
As a marketer, it’s in your best interests to figure out which types of marketing drive campaign success. With the right tools, metrics and strategy, you can highlight your marketing success and justify your value to the company.
For example, with Ruler, you can attribute revenue to your marketing channels and optimise your budgets for maximum return. Read more about Ruler and how it attributes revenue to your marketing, or book a demo to see it in action.
