Contents
Profit. Expansion. Marketing Campaigns. Financing. What do all these things have in common? Well, many things really, but for the sake of this article, they are all areas in which businesses may struggle.
There are already heaps of articles about how to improve in these areas in order to have a successful business. But this is not one of those articles. That’s because we don’t believe in jumping right in with new strategies without doing the right research first.
What we believe in is accurately measuring performance indicators over time so that you can make informed decisions based on factual data.
This article will discuss three of the most important performance indicators and explain why you should start tracking them today.
1. Brand Awareness
A study by the Content Marketing Institute showed that building brand awareness is a top goal for both B2C and B2B marketers. Excellent! Without driving towards increasing brand awareness, it would be almost impossible for brands to gain that coveted top-of-mind spot with their target audience. Considering brand awareness is the first stop on the sales funnel, remaining relatively unknown in the marketplace will not usually result in the conversion and retention of loyal customers.
Every day, we see campaigns that big brands are running to increase brand awareness (for example, the latest Brioni spring campaign fronted by Brad Pitt). Sadly,many smaller brands are not adequately tracking how these campaigns affect their brand awareness levels, meaning that marketing executives may make the wrong decisions.
By tracking your brand awareness levels you will be able to:
- Reliably measure changes in brand awareness as a result of marketing campaigns
- Prove campaign impact
- Discover how brand awareness campaigns affect entire markets
Such information will enable you to make better marketing decisions and steadily grow your brand.
2. Funnel Drop-off Rate
Getting as much of your target audience as possible to the brand awareness stage is an amazing feat, but the hard work must continue. For your company to succeed you need to successfully guide your audience along the next steps of the sales funnel: interest, decision, and action.
Tracking your funnel drop-off rate will help you identify problems in your sales process. Website visitors not spending time browsing your site? Your content hasn’t caught their interest (the average internet user spends just 37 seconds reading an article). If you can’t pique interest in your product during this time, you’ve lost them. Nobody is buying your product? You haven’t convinced them of its value.
Knowing how many people drop off at each point of the funnel will show you where you need to make adjustments to turn prospects into customers.
3. Customer Satisfaction
Even after successfully converting prospects to customers, the work doesn’t end. With so many options available in today’s marketplace, even the most loyal customer will turn their back on a once-beloved brand if they feel they are offered something better elsewhere. In fact, according to Hubspot, 50% of US consumers have left a brand they were loyal to for a competitor that better met their needs.
Avoid losing your customer base by proactively tracking customer satisfaction rates. Ask customers what they like about your current service and, more importantly, what is it that you could be doing better. Add value and improve their satisfaction going forward. Considering there is a 60-70% probability of selling to an existing customer, the time and effort will be worth it.
These are just a few of the many performance indicators you can and should start tracking. Don’t be the company that acts only after realizing the competition is slaughtering them. Be proactive, have key insights at hand, and make better decisions for the development of your company.
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
