The 4th and 5th steps in the 5-step process to properly tracking ROI from your marketing involves setting up a live dashboard that measures sales data against marketing data.
So at this point, you’ve got your campaigns running. You have a proper lead attribution model in place. You have a CRM in place to track leads coming in from campaigns. And finally, you’ve started to work on optimizing your lead distribution process.
Now it’s time to:
- Visualize your ROI so it tells a story
- Evaluate marketing channels to make decisions that improve ROI
Setup an ROI Dashboard
Dashboard platforms, such as Klipfolio or Databox, allow you to visualize multiple data sources in one location. This enables you to tell you a story about what is really going on so you can make smarter, more informed decisions. Below is an example.
Your ROI dashboard will need to be configured to compare a few key points against their affect from closed revenue as a result of opportunities in your CRM that resulted from marketing campaign. Below are a few recommended points that should be included in your ROI dashboard.
- Marketing channels (e.g. Google Ads, social media ads, email marketing campaign segments, etc.)
- Lines of business
- Quality of leads (resulting from input into the CRM from the sales team)
- Sales reps
Obviously, the points to measure against ROI will depend on the nature of your business.
Once you have your dashboard setup, it’s time to evaluate it and start asking the right questions.
Evaluate ROI from Your Dashboard
When looking at your ROI dashboard, consider asking the following questions:
- What marketing channels are producing the greatest quality of leads?
- What marketing channels are producing the poorest quality of leads?
- What marketing channels are producing the highest sales conversions?
- What is the average revenue produced per marketing channel?
- Who on the sales team is having the greatest success with closing marketing leads? (you can use this to focus your attention on what they are doing and coaching other sales team members on what they are doing)
If you include the right visualizations of the data into your dashboard, you should be able to answer all of these questions and then some. If you can’t, consider making adjustments to your dashboard so you can.
The key to success from evaluating your ROI and making decisions based on it is to evaluate it consistently. I typically recommend at least reviewing every 45 days, but if you are running campaigns with larger budgets, you might want to evaluate at least monthly. There needs to be enough statistical significance (i.e. enough leads to evaluate, enough budget spent, etc.) in order to back your evaluations with some plausibility.
Recap
Going through the process of setting up and evaluating your ROI using a dashboard is going to be one of the most important actions you can take to improve your ROI.
Review your ROI dashboard consistently (at least every 30-45 days).
Use your dashboard with your sales team to find way to improve sales conversions.
Identify what marketing channels are working, what channel need tweaking, and what channels just need to go.
Evaluating your ROI dashboard and making better decisions to improve the health of your marketing and business is similar to going to the doctor, getting a physical, seeing the results, and making proper changes can improve your health…
You need to measure the right things.
You need to understand what your viewing.
You need to implement changes that improve results.
You need to repeat this process consistently considering nothing in the world is constant.
Markets change. Marketing channels change. People change.
You don’t have full control over what changes, or how it changes.
The only thing that you can fully control is your actions.
Use data to guide your actions and make the right decisions.
Doing so will give you the best possible chance of succeeding, not just at marketing, but at life!
