How to Measure the Success of Your Startup’s Marketing Campaigns
To help you identify the most effective metrics for your startup’s marketing campaigns, we’ve gathered insights from twelve industry professionals, including CEOs and marketing directors. From evaluating the cost per lead/sale to tracking email sign-ups and social followers, discover the key metrics these leaders use to measure the success of their marketing efforts.
- Evaluate the Cost Per Lead/Sale
- Measure New Leads Generated
- Monitor Customer Acquisition Cost
- Focus On Customer Lifetime Value
- Attribute Revenue to Campaigns
- Count Consultations Requested
- Rank for Relevant Keywords
- Watch the Conversion Rate
- Assess Impact via Customer Lifetime Value
- Calculate Campaign ROI
- Use CAC as a Strategic Tool
- Track Email Sign-ups and Social Followers
Evaluate the Cost Per Lead/Sale
As the director of a marketing company that supports business growth in its early stages, the most important measure we track is the cost per lead/cost per sale. This way, we can quickly identify if our marketing approach is profitable, sustainable, and scalable.
For businesses that are, we scale rapidly to fuel customer growth. If they aren’t, we end those campaigns and build new ones to test further.
Chris Stott, Director, Seven Marketing
Measure New Leads Generated
In my experience, I’ve found that the most important metric to track is the number of new leads generated from each campaign. When you’re just starting out, you don’t have much of a customer base yet, so it’s all about building your brand and getting people interested in what you’re doing. The best way to do that is by getting them excited about your product or service so that they’ll tell their friends and family about it, too.
If you can generate more leads than the previous month, then it means that your marketing campaign was successful. If not, then you should take some time to evaluate what you could do differently so that next time around, there will be an increase in leads generated.
Noel Griffith, CMO, SupplyGem
Monitor Customer Acquisition Cost
One essential metric to gauge the effectiveness of our startup’s marketing campaigns is the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). By tracking the cost required to gain each new customer, we can evaluate the efficiency of our marketing efforts.
A decreasing CAC over time shows improved campaign performance, demonstrating our ability to gain customers at a lower expense.
This metric enables us to optimize resource allocation, refine targeting strategies, and ensure a healthy balance between acquisition expenses and the value generated from acquired customers, contributing to the overall success and growth of the startup.
Divya Ghughatyal, Digital Marketing Specialist, Gleantap
Focus On Customer Lifetime Value
CLV enables a customer-centric view that forms the basis for aligning key marketing and sales strategies for subscription-based businesses. By knowing the lifetime value of each customer, informed decisions can be made regarding acquisition, retention, cross-selling, upselling, and support.
Tracking a customer’s lifetime value can better allocate marketing resources and target marketing campaigns to specific customer segments. By identifying your most valuable customers, you can focus your efforts on attracting those same customers and achieve a higher return on investment.
By developing retention strategies for high-CLV customers, you can increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer churn, and increase overall customer lifetime value. Also, by analyzing customer behavior and purchase patterns along their journey, you can identify complementary products or services that would appeal to them.
Henrik Park, CEO, Marketin
Attribute Revenue to Campaigns
The most important metric to determine the effectiveness of campaigns is the revenue generated. The key lies in attributing the revenue back to each marketing campaign.
This is the reason behind the creation of SquidVision, a tool designed to attribute revenue back to each landing page. This allows for a definitive understanding of whether the campaigns are profitable, using the most important metric—revenue.
This is beneficial for subscription-based revenue models, as customers become more valuable. It’s crucial to track all the revenue a landing page generates.
Adam White, Founder, SquidVision
Count Consultations Requested
I run a marketing agency, so one of the most important metrics for us is the number of consultations requested. At some level, we’re agnostic about what the best marketing channel is. What we care about is which one is most productive.
Like every business, we love it when we have robust organic traffic to our website, but that’s only a secondary measure. The main thing is the number of conversions this traffic is able to drive. All the visibility and brand recognition in the world isn’t worth anything unless it actually leads to new clients.
Temmo Kinoshita, Co-Founder, Lindenwood Marketing
Rank for Relevant Keywords
For me, it’s all about organic keyword rankings. We invest significant resources to ensure that we rank for the most relevant keywords, especially those with high search volumes.
The reason is simple: these high-volume keywords pull in a larger audience. So, if you rank highly for these, it’s equivalent to casting a wider net in an enormous sea full of potential customers. It’s a strategy that has proven effective for us time and again.
When our keywords rank higher on Google, it brings more organic traffic to our site. This increase in traffic typically translates into more leads and sales for our startup, which is an excellent indicator of a successful marketing campaign.
David Rubie-Todd, Co-Founder and Marketing Head, Sticker It
Watch the Conversion Rate
In the domain of campaign success, the conversion rate stands as the ultimate guide. Witness a groundbreaking 30% surge in the conversion rate within three months through a major campaign.
This metric signifies not just clicks, but the transformation of visitors into actual customers. During the launch of an app upgrade campaign, an impressive 2,500 new users registered, proving its mettle.
The conversion of visitors into customers underscores the genuine effectiveness of strategies. Beyond mere engagement, this metric validates the real impact of campaigns and forms the cornerstone of marketing evaluation, substantiating the tangible influence of the campaign.
Himanshu Sharma, CEO and Founder, Academy of Digital Marketing
Assess Impact via Customer Lifetime Value
A key metric that plays a significant role in evaluating the success of our startup’s marketing campaigns is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). CLV assesses the long-term value a customer brings to our business.
By tracking this metric, we can better understand the overall impact of our marketing efforts on customer retention and loyalty.
It helps us allocate resources more efficiently by focusing on strategies that acquire new customers and encourage repeat purchases and engagement over time. This approach aligns with our goal of building lasting customer relationships and sustainable growth for the business.
Adam Garfield, Marketing Director, Hairbro
Calculate Campaign ROI
It’s definitely ROI or Return on Investment. It helps to find the gap between the cost of the campaign and the revenue generated. Plus, with this metric, it becomes super easy to judge whether a marketing plan is successful.
Marketing heads of start-ups can check the ROI of different marketing campaigns to find the most successful ones. I suggest calculating the ROI of social media campaigns, SEO, content marketing and paid SEM separately.
Charu Mitra Dubey, Content Marketing Lead, Smartlead
Use CAC as a Strategic Tool
The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the most valuable metric in the marketing toolkit. CAC isn’t just digits; it’s a compass to success. It’s like having a wise friend who guides you to invest smartly and find the best marketing avenues.
With CAC, one can be like a puzzle-solver, uncovering the strategies that work like magic. It’s a crystal ball, predicting the resources needed to hit growth goals. Pricing? CAC whispers the sweet spot for value and profit.
Investors appreciate resource management, thanks to CAC’s insights. It’s a problem-solver, spotting hiccups in the customer journey. Paired with the Customer Lifetime Value, CAC reveals how efforts pay off.
Evolution is the game, with CAC trends shaping improvements. Scaling? CAC ensures confident steps and costs are aligned with revenue. CAC isn’t just a metric; it’s a strategic sidekick, making startup success a reality!
Sonu Bubna, Founder, Shopper.com
Track Email Sign-ups and Social Followers
One metric I track is the number of people who sign up for my email list. I track this because it’s a huge indicator of how successful my marketing campaigns are.
If someone signs up for my email list, then they’ve shown that they’re interested in what our company is doing and have enough interest in giving us their contact information.
I also look at the number of new followers we get on social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook. These are important because they show how much reach our content has and how many people are engaging with it.
Rengie Wisper, Marketing Manager, SupplyGem
