[ModMarketing] How to Measure AEC Marketing Campaign Results
Transcript
If the results from your marketing campaign efforts are not tracked, how will you know if it’s working or not? It seems simplistic when I say this out loud, but for many AEC firms, collecting and analyzing the results of online or content marketing efforts is often the hardest part. And, because you are not collecting, analyzing, or presenting the campaign results to your firm leaders, it’s difficult for you to get buy-in for additional marketing resources.
So, how do you collect and analyze the marketing campaign results? That’s exactly what I’m going to walk you through on today’s special ModMarketing episode. Just a reminder, that ModMarketing is a special podcast series that walks you through how to set up an online marketing program for your firm. My goal with these episodes is to let you know that you’re on the right track, that online marketing can and is working for AEC firms, that your feelings are valid, and you’re doing a great job, in fact, the best job that you can do.
But before we get to today’s episode, can you do me a quick favor? Would you share this episode with one of your AEC marketing friends? Or if not this episode, whatever episode of Marketers Take Flight that you love the most. As you do with your own content, for this podcast, I work really hard to create it, and I want to make sure that it supports and reaches as many marketers who need it as possible. So if you could share it with one, two, or ten, I’d be forever grateful.
All right, friend. Let’s do this.
So in today’s episode, I am going to share the steps to begin collecting the results of your marketing campaign and analyzing those results.
If you’ve been following along with the ModMarketing podcast series, you’ve learned how to create the campaign and promote it. So now it’s time to analyze the results and compare them against your marketing goals to determine the performance of the campaign.
The hardest part about selling online marketing strategies to your firm’s leadership is showing the results. And choosing what to measure and how to measure the results is where many marketers often get stuck.
So let’s back up a bit and go back to your marketing planning stage. Because, the best time to select the metrics to be used in analyzing the marketing campaign results, is in the planning stages. Thinking through this while you’re planning your campaign, allows you to set up the proper tracking software or infrastructure to gather the correct results.
The first step to do this is to go back to your campaign goals. Look at those goals again and think about how those goals can be measured.
Let me give you an example.
If your original goal was to increase brand awareness in the Texas market. And you’re going to measure this goal by increasing web traffic in Texas by 25% in the first 2 quarters of 2023. That’s your goal and how you’ll measure it.
So, now you’ll want to make sure that a) you can track web traffic, b) that you can track the web geography, and c) have a baseline number for the web traffic from Texas before the campaign begins.
If you don’t have that ability or information before you begin the campaign, it’s going to be very difficult to gather and analyze the results.
That’s why having very SMART goals outlined and agreed upon by leadership is critical to be able to track, analyze, and progress to achieving goals. And if you need a refresher on the SMART goals and how to set them for your marketing campaigns, go back and listen to Episode 72. I even provide you with a goals worksheet to help you write marketing campaign goals.
So the first step is to write your goals and use those to identify what you need to measure, how you’ll measure it, and identify what software, technology, etc. you’ll need to put into place. Another important piece of information is to gather your baseline numbers. Going back to our example of the web traffic, you’ll want to record what the current web traffic from Texas is now, so you can see any change.
Step 2 is understanding that AEC marketing metrics may be different than other industries.
AEC is different than other industries when it comes to marketing. It isn’t e-commerce. The AEC industry doesn’t provide online stores. AEC firm clients typically don’t buy their services through their websites. So, this means that typical marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) like Cost per Acquisition, Customer Attrition, or even marketing-originated customers really aren’t relevant.
That’s why it is so important to get your marketing campaigns SMART Goals determined. When those goals are clear, written down, and agreed upon by firm leadership, the metrics to determine your campaign’s performance become more clear.
Step 3 is to brainstorm different possible campaign metrics.
So, what should you measure? How should you measure the results of your online marketing campaigns?
You should identify quantifiable metrics that align with the goals of the organization and the SMART goals as I already mentioned (hopefully you’re starting to realize the importance of the goals by now!). Okay getting off my goals-soap box!
Most likely the overall metrics will fall into two buckets:
Either new leads – people who are new to your firm’s funnel
OR, more interaction with current contacts to “nurture” the relationship until that contact needs your firm’s services.
And because each of our marketing goals is all going to be different, I cannot simply provide a list of 10 example metrics in this episode. However, I am going to share some potential metrics (KPIs) that you can consider, again the metrics or metrics you select need to be based on the campaign goals.
I am just going to go through some common marketing metrics you can use to brainstorm.
Okay, let’s go.
Possible AEC Marketing Campaign Metrics can include:
- Website Traffic
- Search traffic/keyword rankings
- Backlinks
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
- Email sign-up rate
- The delivery, open, click rate
- Engagement/interaction rate
- Follower growth rate
- Brand mentions
You can then take those metrics and compare the marketing performance to a previous time such as:
- In the previous month,
- A 3-month average, or
- Specific goal(s).
So step 3 was to brainstorm the different metrics that could be used to support your marketing campaign goal. The next step is to identify the metrics that shouldn’t be measured. What? Why would we not want to measure anything, Lindsay? Isn’t that point of online marketing, we can measure everything?!?!?
By now you know that your main metrics should be collected and analyzed based on the campaign goal. You’re in agreement with me on that, right? With that agreement, the things or results that you can’t impact should not be measured.
If you or your firm can’t change it, there’s no point in tracking it or making it a KPI.
Vanity metrics should also not be tracked, or at least, have too much weight or emphasis placed on them. Marketers are sometimes tempted to track vanity metrics like Facebook page likes or Twitter followers, but if you’re not currently implementing a social media campaign with the goal of getting more likes or followers, why track it? It’s not an effective KPI.
And, you definitely shouldn’t present that type of information to the firm leadership.
Let’s cover the 4 steps to analyze your marketing performance. Those were:
- Identify your marketing campaign goals and use those to identify how you’ll measure success and the technology or infrastructure you need in place
- Understand that the marketing metrics in the AEC industry and for AEC-specific marketing campaigns are different, they are not related to e-commerce-type metrics
- Brainstorm different metrics that support your goals
- Identify what you’re not going to measure, especially those metrics you have no control over or don’t support your goals
And before we go today, I want to cover a few best practices when it comes to collecting and analyzing marketing campaign results.
You should keep this in mind as you plan for, implement, and analyze the results of your online marketing campaigns.
Use the campaign goal as the basis for analyzing the results. Hopefully, you’re getting the importance of this by now. You should tie what the goal of the campaign is to what metrics you collect and analyze.
Connect marketing platforms. By starting with the goals, you know what metrics you need to collect. But, this is also the time to evaluate what systems can be connected and automatically share information. A great example of this is the Blackbox Connector for Mailchimp or Constant Contact. These connect the email marketing statistics to the Deltek Vision and Vantagepoint CRM systems. With these connectors, you can easily pull in the statistics for one email campaign or an email campaign series into the Deltek Marketing Campaign. And the Blackbox Connector isn’t the only integration. Look for others to help automate and systemize the data collection for you.
Limit KPIs to only those that are needed. You might be tempted to collect more data or statistics than necessary to see how the campaign is performing. Especially when first getting started, limited to collecting and analyzing only those metrics or KPIs that are needed to see how the performance is measuring to the goal.
Tailor the KPIs to the audience. If your marketing campaign performance needs to be presented to firm leadership, make sure to tailor what is shown to your audience to just what they need to see how it’s performing to goal. For example, you may be tracking email newsletter opt-in rates and email bounce rates. However, if that’s not a goal of the specific marketing campaign, don’t report those metrics in a presentation to your firm principals.
Now it’s your turn! Turn this insight into action. Here’s your challenge for this episode. Take one of your marketing campaigns, better if it’s still in the planning stage, but it can also be already underway. With that one marketing campaign in mind, review the goal for that campaign. Then come up with at least one metric or one way you’ll use to analyze its performance. And I’m holding you accountable. Once you’ve done this, go over to the show notes page at Marketerstakeflight.com/92 and tell me what that metric is! Comment on the show notes page on the metric or metrics you’ll use to measure the campaign performance.
And, if you’re struggling let me know too by commenting. That will allow me and our community to help you through it. Again, that’s over at marketerstakeflight.com/92.
Collecting and analyzing the performance of marketing campaigns is only half the battle! The next step is optimizing the campaign’s performance to get even better results. And the next episode of the ModMarketing series, I’ll share a few different areas to optimize when it comes to your marketing efforts. Subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out!
Until next time, bye for now!
