You have a team of awesome marketing people.
You have got the right marketing automation tool.
You have built solid processes to execute your marketing strategies.
What else are you missing?
You need a measurement – a report that contains actionable metrics that measure your marketing progress from different angles against your goals. Below are three types of reports that can not only provide valuable insight into your business but also guide your marketing operations in your desired direction and pace.
Content is the foundation of marketing for any organization. You want to produce compelling content that attracts your target audience. However, you have different personas, and your audience is likely to be in a different stage of their buying journey. In order to fit their needs, you must tailor your marketing content with different formats, subjects, timing and even delivering channels. The question then comes, what is the most effective marketing content in terms of brand awareness? Which content has captured the most qualified contacts for your business? What types of content should you invest in at what time of the year? Content-based metrics can help you answer these questions.
The conversion rate of marketing content by month – It shows the trend of the conversion rate of all marketing content combined. It illustrates the high level of effectiveness of your marketing content over time.
The conversion rate of marketing content by type – It tells you which type of content brings you the most submissions. Should you invest in demo videos, whitepapers, or case studies with your next marketing dollar?
The conversion rate of marketing content by type by month – It shows a trend by drilling down the conversion rate of each marketing content. For example, why a well-performed content suddenly drops conversion in a particular month?
Top five marketing content (based on the submission) by month – It tells you which content brings you the most contacts every month. For example, you may choose to share the most converted content with your partners as a co-marketing opportunity.
Contact based metrics help you gain insights beyond the contacts you captured. You can use this type of metrics to shape your marketing strategies, adjust your marketing budget allocations, and really optimize your marketing operations by building your marketing funnel to align with the sales funnel.
Marketing qualified contact (MQC) growth by month – MQC is an essential linkage that connects marketing and sales, but you need to have a clear definition of MQC before you start to measure it.
The rate of total MQCs vs. total contacts by month – This is the formula to construct your marketing and sales funnel. You can extend this to different variations, such as MQC: Sales Qualified Contacts (SQCs), SQC: Pipeline Opportunities, Contacts: Deals, etc.
MQCs by source by month – This is especially important if your business is impacted by seasons. Also, this trend shows the effectiveness of your marketing campaign across different sources. Therefore, you can decide if you want to add $5,000 in marketing dollars to the channel that generates the most MQCs, or use it to fix your weakest channel.
Contact score by source by month – If you have a contact scoring system, this metric will provide you with a very detailed and reliable view of where you have gained the most qualified contacts over time. You can even drill it down by contact sources as shown in the chart below. It’s a metric that can help you shape your marketing strategies at a high level.
Traffic based metrics have been commonly used in reports. However, besides those standard metrics, such as page views, unique visits, top viewed pages, etc, I find the following two metrics can provide unexpected insight but sometimes are overlooked by marketers.
Top 5 entry pages by month – Where should you start to optimize your website to drive usability, searchability, and conversion? the answer is you want to start where your visitors start.
Traffic by the time of the day – Do you gain most of your visit at 8AM, 9AM or 1PM? When should you send your email campaign? This metric will give you the answer. You can also use it in a different format. For example, traffic by day, which tells you which day of the week you have the most/least visits, can help you better schedule your marketing campaign launches.