Marketing Campaign ROI

Tracking social media performance (or any channel for that matter) by “leads” captured via a landing page or website is a dangerous way to evaluate a campaign, as much as it is misrepresentative to rely on vanity metrics like “clicks” or “impressions” to measure the success of a campaign.  

Consumers don’t stay in their lane

And they certainly don’t jump through all the hoops we put in place as marketers to try and “track” activity – something we absolutely should and must do to point sales in the right direction. The penultimate way to measure performance is to jump beyond leads and go straight to the only metric that monetizes marketing investments: “Did they become a member?”, by matching target lists and campaign duration to membership sales. That’s why baked into our process is membership roster refreshes weeks after the conclusion of a campaign so we can properly monetize it and send clients a more accurate depiction of conversion rates and ROI. 

Think of it this way ... and this is precisely how I picked my new club in Columbus:  

1. I searched Google for “fitness clubs near me” 
2. I clicked on the club I ended up joining (bam … they registered a click) 
3. I abandoned the landing page they took me to and started trolling their site directly (now I just scored a victory for SEO) 
4. I did not call. I did not complete a landing page. I did not leave any additional evidence. 
5. I drove to the gym. Took a tour. They didn’t ask how I found them, but I bet I would have said, “I Googled you.” 

So, in that scenario, Google gets the “verbal victory” with the person that did the tour. But it gets a big ZERO for the landing page and SEO also gets a big ZERO because it had no way of tracking me into completing a form.   

Most people won't complete forms.

They’ll digest the information and then take whatever action they feel is best, be it a phone call, a visit, etc. And, then when you ask, “How did you find out about us?” you may get an answer like, “I drive by here on the way to work.” And now EVERY channel lost even though they played a role in conversion.  

This is a complex subject and one near and dear to my data-driven heart and is the “backbone” of why I started this company. Our ROI Reports go beyond the gray matter and get us closer as marketers to black/white ROI. It’s not a perfect science, but leaps and bounds beyond clicks, impressions, reach, landing page submissions, text keywords, etc. It’s the “best” way to measure performance from my experience.  

The truth is that VERY FEW conversions we see have clear-cut landing page submissions. People don’t like to give/leave information behind. They often don’t want to be contacted. I don’t think they ever did, but the propensity for someone to do so in 2019/2020 is far less than it was in 2001/2002.  

Get in touch to learn about our data-driven processes and how they’re delivering profitable marketing campaigns to our clients. 

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