How would you like to get all the marketing budget could ever want?
Marketing directors are constantly under the gun to prove their own existence to the people holding the purse strings. But we’ve found through experience that when your company’s executives see how your marketing efforts directly impact the bottom line, they’re quick to funnel more budgeting resources your way.
To win a bigger marketing budget, you’ll need to prove that your marketing efforts effectively increase company revenue. Content might be king of marketing, but Data is emperor of the budget. That means tracking the right metrics from the past 12 months—and having the right tools in place to do it. Still figuring out your metrics? No sweat—I’ll walk you through it.
Inbound Metrics To-Do List
Here’s your inbound metrics to-do list for planning your marketing budget request. It’ll help you get your act together so you can start monitoring the right KPIs and establish benchmarks. (Stay tuned for an upcoming blog with detailed info on the right KPIs to monitor with these tools.)
Install Google Analytics
Make sure you have Google Analytics installed—and installed correctly. Google Analytics lets you create reports that show the different ways visitors interact with your website, blog, and landing pages. And it provides insightful information on SEO analytics. But GA is a little tricky to install correctly, and if it’s not setup right, you won’t get the data you need.
Get admin access to social media
Just because you’re posting on social media doesn’t mean you have the right access. Identify all of your social media channels—even the ones you’re not using—and make sure you have administrator privileges. This level of permissions will give you access to some terrific data and reports that you can use to show the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. Different platforms provide different reports, but we really like Twitter’s analytics. To measure social traffic being driven to a website, use either HubSpot’s Social Reports or Google Analytics.
Get email marketing reports
Make sure you’ve got access to email marketing results. Most email marketing platforms like MailChimp and Constant Contact provide easy-to-use reports and analytics that you can review to quickly track the performance of your emails and newsletters. HubSpot has terrific email analytics as well.
Check your landing pages and blogs
Identify all of your landing pages and track the conversions and page views. Look at the top five landing pages (views & conversions) and blog posts (views) for last 12 months. We use Google Analytics and HubSpot to do this, but you can also use LeadIn and Gravity Forms.
It’s a quick to-do list, and that’s the beauty of it. Really, you don’t need to have more than these items in place before you’re ready to collect some powerful data that shows the value of your marketing efforts. More information on that coming soon—stay tuned!
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