Evaluating the success of your marketing campaign

Different companies evaluate the success of their marketing campaigns differently.These methods of measuring success are not always a series of set calculations.There are times when marketing success cannot be seen in numbers and sales.Such situations include raising awareness about your product or improving your company's overall image.These two examples are certainly successes by marketing standards, but not everyone will be equally encouraged by these non-numerical accomplishments.Evaluating the success of your marketing campaign is better described as a combination of both actual number of sales and the inclusion of factors that may not be as readily apparent.

Know which funnels (or series of marketing actions) are yielding or not yielding results

One of the first things that you need to do in order to evaluate the success of your marketing campaign is to first know what aspect of that campaign you will be looking into.Too many times it is assumed that the campaign is perfect and it is the customers who are not responding.When you take the time to analyze the series of marketing actions themselves, you can gain a better idea for what actions yielded results or what actions did little or nothing to promote your marketing goals.Funnels are important aspects of marketing to keep at the forefront of your mind.You can minimize or even eliminate a lot of work for yourself if you can identify a step in the process of marketing that needs to be changed rather than having to assume that the whole process was flawed and investing the time and energy in reconstructing the whole marketing plan.

Evaluate cost per conversion (what is a conversion to you?)

Conversion is defined differently depending on the type of business that you are in.For many the point of conversion is where money is exchanged and the product or service is received by the customer.But many companies do not deal in such absolutes.A conversion may be a sale but it could also be the prospect of a sale such as a lead or a referral.For companies that do only a few high yield deals a year, there are certainly more conversion factors involved than simply signing the final paperwork.Once you have decided on what a "conversion" will mean to you, the next step is to evaluate the success of your marketing plan by breaking down what your cost per conversion was.If you are exerting effort that exceeds the value of the conversion than there are some changes that are needed.Many companies take their cost per conversion figure into account when deciding on the price that they will charge the customer for the product.Economic theories of supply and demand are also key factors in determining what your conversion costs are.The higher the demand is for your product, the less hard you will have to work to market that product and visa versa.

Do not underestimate the customers still interested in your product even though they may not have made a purchase.

As was eluded to earlier, marketing is mainly about increasing sales, after all you are in business to make money, but seeing those increases in sales does not always happen immediately.There are many times when a marketing campaign may have been successful in its goal of raising awareness or changing peoples' minds but that those individuals (for whatever reason) have not yet been able to make a purchase.This partial success of a marketing campaign is not always easy to see or to quantify, but you do not want to assume that your whole campaign was for naught simply because you succeeded mostly but not entirely.To measure these partial successes you may want to conduct a survey or questionnaire to uncover the success of your marketing campaign that is not reflected in increased sales.