16 Simple Tips for Measuring the Success of Your Marketing Efforts

From measuring with lead acquisition metrics to trying out A/B testing, here are the 16 answers to the question, “What are your most effective tips for measuring the success of your marketing efforts?”

• Use Lead Acquisition Metrics
• Let Go of Comparison
• Establish Clear and Measurable Goals
• Monitor the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
• Track Changes in Long-term Funnel Performance
• Balance Quantity and Quality
• Implement a Link Tracking System
• Give It Time
• Benchmark Your Performance Data
• Calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Try the First-click Attribution Model
• Run Analytics Tools
• Review a Dashboard
• Pay Attention to Your Platforms
• Understand Leading vs. Lagging Indicators
• Remember the Power of A/B Testing

Use Lead Acquisition Metrics 

In B2B marketing, we often use metrics around lead acquisition to measure the success of our marketing efforts and individual campaigns. 

First, we look at the number of leads generated and the cost per lead. We want to ensure we’re generating enough leads and decreasing the cost per lead when possible. From there, we look at the quality of leads because that is equally important. We want to ensure we’re sending the right leads to our sales team, so we categorize leads into general leads, marketing-qualified leads, and sales-qualified leads to measure if we’re bringing the right opportunities to an organization. 

This is just one way to measure the success of your marketing efforts. Determining what to track will depend on the campaign, but this is a consistent metric our firm uses in B2B marketing to see trends over time.

Elyse Flynn Meyer, Owner and Founder, Prism Global Marketing Solutions

Let Go of Comparison

Do not focus too much on your competitors, even if their marketing strategies are currently more successful than yours. Instead, focus on your company’s progress relative to itself. 

If you compare your company’s marketing strategies too much to those of other companies, you may feel the need to do what they are doing, which will hinder your company’s uniqueness. It’s better, in the long run, to stick to your own original ideas and concentrate on making them successful. Uniqueness is invaluable.

Miles Beckett, Co-Founder and CEO, Flossy

Establish Clear and Measurable Goals

One tip for measuring the success of your marketing efforts is to establish clear and measurable goals before launching your campaign. This includes setting targets for metrics, such as website traffic, conversions, and customer engagement. 

By tracking these metrics and comparing them to your goals, you can gain a better understanding of how your marketing efforts are impacting your business and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy. Additionally, consider using tools such as Google Analytics or social media analytics to track and analyze your performance.

Sanket Shah, CEO, InVideo

Monitor the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

One helpful way to evaluate a campaign’s performance is by calculating the cost per acquisition (CPA). CPA allows marketers to compare the return on investment in various campaigns with each other and assess their overall effectiveness. 

As such, it’s a crucial key performance indicator when the stated goals involve increasing brand awareness, extending the reach, or acquiring new customers. Although CPA is only one measure of success, it is an essential barometer for deciding how, where, and when resources should be allocated.

Michael Sena, Founder and CEO, SENACEA

Track Changes in Long-term Funnel Performance

Marketing works on two simultaneous tracks—short-term sales activations and long-term brand building. The latter is hard to measure but vital to understanding the total impact of marketing investments.

In order to get a clear picture of brand-based performance, create your funnel and set up measurement instruments for two key metrics. Throughput and conversion. In practice, this starts defining what each stage means to your business in easily trackable terms. At the end of the exercise, you should be able to take 12 months of data and pinpoint leaks in the funnel.

Here’s the important part, though. Don’t treat funnel building as a one-off exercise. Create automations and systems that can offer a rolling 12-month view, picking up and reflecting the work your teams have done in that time. That’s how you create a valuable, ongoing, and responsive cycle of feedback on long-term investment strategy.

Chris Martin, Chief Marketing Officer, FlexMR

Balance Quantity and Quality

Measuring the success of your marketing efforts requires taking a holistic approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative metrics. While quantifiable metrics such as conversions, click-through rates, and sales can provide valuable information about the success of your marketing efforts, they do not give a complete picture of the impact your campaigns have on your target audience.

To truly understand the impact of your marketing efforts, it’s crucial to consider qualitative data. We can gather this through observations, interviews, focus groups, and other methods that allow you to hear directly from your audience about what they think and feel about your marketing campaigns.

By incorporating qualitative data into your marketing success measurement, you can understand how your campaigns resonate with your target audience and make data-driven decisions that lead to more effective marketing strategies.

Matt Artz, Business Anthropologist, Matt Artz

Implement a Link Tracking System

It’s important for marketers to understand where leads are originating from. Learn how to create UTM parameters (or code that is added to links that reveal where the link was found). 

Using UTM parameters, you can easily tell if a person clicked a link through email or social media, and even if the click came from Twitter vs. Facebook. After adding UTM parameters to a link that corresponds with everywhere the link appears on the web, I shorten the links on Bitly. Then, I can log into my dashboard and see which receives the most clicks at a glance.

Annie Ricci, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing, Prima

Give It Time

Too many people expect an immediate change in their marketing endeavors. It’s understandable that if you invest thousands or more into marketing, you’ll be eager to see the change your investment has wrought. 

Unfortunately, marketing needs time for its effects to be seen. We’re not talking days—you’ll likely need to wait at least a month or more before you see noticeable changes. Even then, the changes you notice from your marketing effort may be more subtle than they are explosive. 

Have patience and let your efforts build steam. Don’t harass your marketing team, or be too hasty to change course because results don’t seem to happen immediately. Pivoting because you don’t like the pace can be a waste of money and time. Be patient and let your efforts bear fruit before you look to pull in your harvest.

Max Ade, CEO, Pickleheads

Benchmark Your Performance Data

Be sure to benchmark your performance data. Set yourself measurable goals that you can benchmark against and track your progress. Track your data over time to get an understanding of the success of your marketing efforts, as well as any areas that need improvement. 

This will help keep you focused on the right metrics and ensure that you are making meaningful improvements in the effectiveness of your campaigns. Additionally, with proper analysis of your data, you can identify any areas for additional focus or experimentation. This will help you stay ahead of the competition and deliver results that have a real impact on your bottom line. Taking the time to measure progress is essential if you want to maximize the value of every marketing dollar spent.

Yusuf Shurbaji, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Prismfly

Calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Calculate your net promoter score (NPS) by routinely running customer surveys to measure your customer acquisition. Use these surveys to solicit feedback from your customers. 

If the feedback is good, then ask them for reviews on your site and third-party websites such as Yelp—if bad, then this is an opportunity to immediately address pressing issues. 

After this, ask your customer how likely would they be to refer your company to a friend, then use that data to calculate your NPS. This is a key metric to measure the success of your marketing efforts by getting a more personable feel for the sentiments of your customers.

Nick Allen, Founder and CEO, SportsLingo

Try the First-click Attribution Model

To effectively track your marketing campaigns, always attribute conversions to the first click that brought the user to your website.

Last-click attribution can often be very misleading. E.g. someone might have discovered your website through SEO, read 10 of your articles, but then converted after visiting your homepage directly.

If you were using last-click attribution, this would’ve given you a very wrong idea of which marketing campaign brought you that specific lead.

Nick Zviadadze, Founder, MintSEO

Run Analytics Tools

There are a multitude of different analytics tools that allow you to track your brand’s marketing efforts and online performance. Tools such as Google Analytics or Meta’s Facebook IQ provide insights into metrics, such as website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates. 

These tools help you gain a better understanding of how your target audience engages with your content and which campaigns stand out to them. Using these tools to run A/B tests as well will help you shape your marketing campaigns so that you can allocate your budget accordingly and create the most effective strategies.

Joe Acosta, Digital Marketing Manager, BBQ Galore

Review a Dashboard

One key factor in measuring the success of your marketing efforts is to use a marketing dashboard. This provides a visual representation of your results through data that you can track and update easily. 

The dashboard should reveal an overview of all metrics, such as conversions, profits, and leads generated. By monitoring this data regularly, you can quickly identify which campaigns are performing best so that you can capitalize on them and adjust or restructure others. Access to up-to-date and accurate results enables you to make informed decisions to ensure a successful marketing strategy moving forward.

Kate Wojewoda-Celinska, Marketing Manager, Spacelift

Pay Attention to Your Platforms

If you or anyone you know is using Google Analytics, then you know Google is sun-setting Universal Analytics and shifting to GA4 entirely this summer. 

To prepare, we have already begun the shift, but we are having issues. We’re having a tough time integrating GA4 and Google Tag Manager. As a result, we have moved our lead tracking system to Hubspot!

Using Hubspot to track leads has helped us significantly and we never question where our leads come from! 

Jeff Pollak, Partner, RadioActive Media Inc.

Understand Leading vs. Lagging Indicators

Leading vs. lagging indicators are important for marketers because they help measure the success of their marketing efforts.

Leading indicators are metrics that predict future performance, such as website traffic, social media engagement, and email opens. These metrics give marketers insight into the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and help them make adjustments to improve their results.

Lagging indicators‌ are metrics that reflect past performance, such as sales revenue and customer acquisition. These metrics provide a historical view of marketing success but don’t offer insights into why the results happened.

By using both, marketers can see the complete picture and make smart decisions about their marketing strategy to get the best results.

Bryan Philips, Head of Marketing, In Motion Marketing

Remember the Power of A/B Testing

One tip for measuring the success of my marketing efforts is to set a clear, specific goal and then track the relevant metrics to see how well my campaign has performed with that set goal.

Specifically, I love using A/B testing to optimize my marketing campaigns. It helps me identify the best strategies and tactics.

Using A/B testing, I can compare two versions of the same campaign to see which performs better. This includes testing different messages, visuals, landing pages, or Call-To-Actions (CTAs).

I get to see what resonates with potential customers and make adjustments for optimal results. By using A/B testing regularly, I can continually refine my efforts and maximize my return on investment (ROI).

Fabio Sparano, Founder, FabioSparano.com