While social media and content marketing are integral to boost leads and revenue for a business, they rarely exist in a vacuum. More often, the past topics of discussion this week are elements of a larger, cross-channel marketing campaign. So how can a marketer predict success of a muti-faceted integrated marketing campaign?
Today, we’re ending our weeklong series on planning for and predicting the success of your marketing campaigns by talking about how to predict marketing success across channels.
The foundation of any successful cross-channel campaign is a strong, measurable goal around which all tactics align. Whether it’s increasing leads by 20% in the next year or bringing in a set amount of new revenue, a goal that is specific, measurable, and timely will set up any marketer with the base they need to measure their future success.
This goal needs to translate seamlessly across all elements of the campaign. Social media, lead generation, content and design (as well as any other facet of the campaign) need to align tactics and execution to maximize their contribution to the larger goal, so be sure that marketing managers all understand how and why their individual activities contribute.
We’ve talked before about the difficulty of measuring marketing’s direct impact on sales and revenue, which is why it’s more important than ever to determine how you plan to measure marketing outputs before a campaign even starts. It’s probably most pressing for you to measure the direct and indirect impact your campaigns have on revenue, but keep your eyes out for effects on other metrics as well, including the length of the sales cycle, percentage of MQLs that become SQLs and total revenue per lead.
However important a data-based campaign goal is, it’s not the end of the line for top-performing marketers. A marketing campaign needs to have continuing effects after it’s over, and as you craft a cross-channel campaign, think about the long-term impact your marketing has. Will it continue to bring in new leads or revenue? How long will a piece of content remain relevant, and what platforms will extend its life? How can you expect the effects to diminish over time?
Not only does thinking long-term allow you to predict the ultimate impact of your work, it also helps you maximize short-term operations to have a lasting effect. Figure out what you need your campaign’s resonance to be six months to a year from its end date, and structure your plans in order to meet those requirements.
Let us know: how are you gearing up for your next big campaign?
Photo Credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg via Flickr Creative Commons
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