Stories of Success

How do you track marketing campaign success? Whether on spreadsheets, in PowerPoint or on sticky notes, your metrics tracking process is most likely one that works best for your team. However, have you considered if it is the way that works best for your organization?

In my years of experience working with various marketing groups, I’ve realized that the teams who have the most success are those who regularly communicate a standard set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to their management teams. They are skilled at telling their stories, updating status and ensuring the information being provided is relevant to the needs of the business and understood by leadership within the organization.

Teams who do not communicate regularly with leadership struggle to receive budget increases, become reactive order-takers of management and find it a challenge to receive buy-in for new campaigns and projects. I’m sure you can guess which group of marketers I’m in favor of.

To gain credibility with management, marketing teams need to establish a regular drumbeat of reporting on activity; set an expectation this will occur regularly. Management can then become knowledgeable about the importance of marketing activities and their direct impact to the business. Leaders always care more about things they can relate back to the underlying goals of the organization.

What should this regular reporting look like? I would recommend a visual dashboard of key performance indicators (KPIs). Visual dashboards are the best way to ensure a story can be quickly understood and trends can be easily identified.

Tip: The marketing team should not determine which KPIs to report out on in a vacuum; work with leadership to determine the goals of the organization and which metrics would be the most relevant to present. Then, review the metrics being presented and ensure they are really valuable – understand why you are measuring them, what they are telling you, how they relate to your goals and what actions can be taken based on the results.

Once the team has gained buy-in from leadership on the KPIs being reported, a bi-weekly or monthly report presented with visual dashboards will quickly tell the story of success. And because the KPIs being presented should all be actionable metrics, if things aren’t quite moving in the right direction, a plan for correction should be underway. This process helps marketing teams build credibility with leadership, grow trust within the company, and be viewed as valuable to the success of the organization.

If you need help tracking marketing KPIs and presenting them in a visual dashboard, contact us at B2E. We’d love to help you tell your marketing stories of success!