Part I, Part II and Part III of this article demonstrated how marketing impacts almost every aspect of your company. But the most important impact is on the financial fundamentals of your business.
You must be able to identify how the online marketing campaign will impact financials such as revenue, cost-per-lead, and profit. This will allow other stakeholders within your company, such as the CFO, to understand the value of your online marketing blueprint and the potential it represents for your company’s ability to sustain and to grow.
In the final part of this article, I’ll discuss how online marketing allows you to track those key performance metrics so that the impact of these marketing strategies can be connected to operational costs and savings.
Metrics
Ensure that the metrics are in place to track important performance data, such as how many people clicked from your website’s call-to-action and filled out the form for lead generation. Implement call tracking numbers to track phone leads that your website is generating.
If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign, your analytics will tell you the cost-per-lead or conversion as long as you have conversion tracking set up and the correct coding on your website to track the conversions. Compare these analytics to your sales closure rate and average revenue per customer. That way, you can measure the profitability and ROI of your online advertising spend.
Outline a timely and realistic follow-up strategy to sales-ready leads. Get regular feedback from your Sales teams as to the quality of these leads and how well they’re converting to customers. This engagement will also ensure that leads are not being neglected and profitability is being maximized.
Operational Costs
Operational costs can also be reduced by uploading marketing, sales, and support collateral to your website. Your online infrastructure can deliver these tools quickly to both prospects and internal team members. You can significantly lower print costs by making forms, brochures, and other items available digitally.
By publishing your documents or information online, such as FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions), website visitors can have their customer service or sales needs met on their own terms, within a self-service fashion. This allows your website to meet the needs of your prospects, customers, and staff – 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Blogs & Forums
Blogs and Forums can allow customers and prospects to easily interact with your Sales and Customer Service team members. However, it is important that you outline a clear plan for these online applications. Who will monitor the discussions on these forums for profanity or responsiveness? Will these forums be moderated or will users be able to post comments without approval? (We always recommend moderating your blog and forum.) Will responses to any customer concerns be published in order to be viewed by the public or will concerns be responded to offline or privately? It’s important that all of these details are decided upon within your blueprint based on your company’s unique needs and resources.
Measure Internet Marketing Performance
A digital blueprint to increase your company’s bottom line does not end at outlining the plans to get your strategy off the ground and running. It must also include a plan to monitor performance after the campaign is initiated.
Most plans fail during implementation. The plan may very well be sound, but more often than not missteps happen during execution. So, oversights can be identified, resolved and even avoided – if key performance metrics are being closely monitored and reported.
In additional to course correction, opportunities for improvement can be uncovered when monitoring the performance of your online marketing strategies. Continual measurement and analysis allows you to fine tune your strategy and test different tactics that may result in lower costs-per-lead and higher conversion rates – thus an increase to your bottom line.
