How Can You Measure the Success of Performance Marketing Campaigns?

What can performance marketing accomplish?

Increased brand awareness, better quality leads, higher conversion rates, increased sales and revenue, customer acquisition and retention. Indeed, there is a long list of reasons you can and must invest in performance marketing campaigns. But the work doesn’t stop at just doing campaigns. They need constant monitoring, measuring and changes to get the best results. The good thing is performance marketing allows this on all possible metrics you might be worried about.

In this blog, let’s go through all the criteria you need to check the success of your performance marketing campaign.

Understand & Establish Campaign Objectives

You must view the results from a holistic standpoint. SMART goals- specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound can be the qualities that provide you with a structure for setting the campaign goals. For example, instead of defining your goal, like increasing sales, try being precise, like “increase in-store sales by 25% over the next quarter.” This clarity ensures that you select only relevant key performance indicators for marketing evaluation.

Key Performance Indicators

As the name suggests, these are the metrics that define the success of a performance marketing campaign. Here are some of the most critical ones you should consider:

- Return on Investment (ROI): This is a comparison between the revenue generated via the campaign and the amount invested to run it. It provides insight into the profitability of your marketing efforts. A high ROI means optimal spending and campaign performance.

- Conversion Rate: This metric shows what percentage of users completed the desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for our services. A high conversion rate is an excellent indicator of your campaign's success.

- Click-Through Rate (CTR): It measures how many users have clicked on your ad compared to the number of users who have seen it. A higher CTR means your content is resonating well with your target audience.

- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This measures how much it costs to acquire a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses. To understand the efficacy of your customer acquisition strategies, it is best to compare it with Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

- Customer Lifetime Value: This is quite difficult to track but a great metric for understanding the long-term impact of the campaign. It evaluates how much you are investing in acquiring and retaining each customer on average.

By focusing on these performance marketing metrics, you can better gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Tools That Can Assist You In Tracking The KPIs

Advanced technology forms the core of performance marketing activities in running and evaluating them. Here are a few popular tools:

- Google Analytics: This tool is quite powerful. It allows you to track website traffic, user behaviour, and conversion rates in real-time. It provides insights into which channels are driving traffic and conversion, enabling you to make data-driven decisions.

- Social Media Analytics: All social media platforms, such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., have integrated analytics tools and engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments. You can use these insights to refine your content strategy and audience targeting.

- CRM Software: Systems like HubSpot or Salesforce can track customer interactions and provide data on metrics like CAC and CLV, helping you manage leads and understand the customer journey.

Criteria You Can Use Beyond The Above Metrics

There are many ways to measure your performance marketing campaign’s success beyond the numerical-based metrics above:

- Qualitative Insights: Qualitative metrics can provide deeper insight into the campaign's performance and help you understand what works best. Gathering feedback through social media or surveys can reveal customer sentiment regarding your brand in a much-defined manner.

- Benchmark Against Competitors: By analysing your campaign against the industry standard, you can identify areas for improvement and recognise competitive advantages. Various tools, like SEMrush, can help you track your competitors' online presence and metrics.

- Attribution Models: Here, you evaluate your customers' journey across various touchpoints, allocate resources to develop the weak ones, understand the most contributing ones effectively, and optimise your future campaigns with more insightful data.

Want to set your brand on a path to consistent growth? Contact your digital growth partners at CRÉO today!