Trackable Performance Metrics
After SMART goals are defined, they need to be refined into trackable performance metrics. Performance metrics, or key performance indicators (KPI’s), help you quantify the goal (It’s hard to know you’ve met a goal if you can’t gauge progress).
Say one of your goals was “increase email subscriptions by 2x in the next 6 months”. The obvious metric is the number of email subscribers, but the amount of subscriber growth in a given timeframe is equally important. Let’s say 2x = 2,000 subscribers to 4,000 subscribers over 6 months.
Broken down, that’s approximately 11 new subscribers per day, 77 per week, 333 per month. How many within the past week did you get? If it’s 7, you’re under target. If the next week it’s 6, you’re heading in the wrong direction and adjustments to your marketing efforts may be needed. Monitoring KPIs within predefined periods allows you to make course corrections early in the process when it’s early enough to affect the outcome.
Furthermore, it’s important to note that you should not just track overall performance, but performance within various channels. Back to our example, it’s important to know where new subscribers originate. If you’re getting 8 new emails per week, 4 from inbound content marketing, 3 from a social media ad buy, but only 1 from paid search, then it’s probably a safe bet to reallocate funds from paid search to your social media ad buy. If in the following week, the number ticks up to 11 and then up to 13, you’re back on track to meet your longer term goals.
Without periodic KPI tracking on a granular basis, a course change would not have happened.
"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."~Peter Drucker
That said, be aware that many marketing efforts are cumulative, and depending on your sales cycle and other factors, you might not see results until the next quarter or later. Especially with strategies such as inbound marketing, some companies won’t see results until anywhere from 6 months to 1 year after implementation, so unfortunately, it’s seldom quite as simple as our handy email list example—but trends will become clear and allow you to use performance metrics to help focus your marketing efforts.
Thanks and be well,
~Your Friendly Animus Rex Team
Tactics will be next in the Align Your Marketing Strategy and Business Goals Series:
Start with WHY | SMART Goals | Buyer Personas | Performance Metrics | Tactics | Tracking | Analyze & Repeat | Selling Alignment Internally | Determine the Value of an Initiative | Selling Alignment Internally Conclusion
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Animus Rex builds world-class websites and provides no-nonsense, well-considered advice like this to all our clients. Want to know more, or have a question? Please Contact us. We're happy to help.