If You Aim at Nothing, You Will Hit It Every Time: Critical Goals for Measuring Marketing Success 

The quote in the headline was made famous by World War II veteran turned motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar. In one of his many famous speeches, he spelled out what he identified as the formula for goal setting:

1. Identify the benefits. Why do you want to do this?
2. Identify the obstacles. What do you need to overcome? 
3. Spell out the skills and knowledge required.
4. Identify who to work with. (People, groups, and organizations)
5. Work out a plan of action.
6. Set a date(s).

These key foundations are the difference between setting a goal vs. having a dream. Whatever the model of goal-setting you follow — Zig Zigler’s method, setting SMART goals, setting HARD goals, or the WOOP method — what remains the same is that goal-setting is critical to success. 

Five Critical Goals for Measuring Marketing Success 

Marketing is a critical piece of business growth. However, for many small- to medium-sized businesses, tracking marketing success flies under the radar. This could be due to a number of reasons such as limited time, limited resources, or lack of expertise. Knowing what to measure and understanding your current standing on these critical metrics is a good place to start. 

Remember: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. 

1. Brand Awareness

Objectives: Increase brand recognition, build a positive brand image, expand reach, and enhance top-of-mind awareness.

Strategies: Influencer marketing, social media marketing, public relations, paid advertising, and content marketing.

Key Metrics: Impressions, reach, brand recall, branded search volume, direct traffic, social media mentions. 

2. Lead Volume

Objective: Increase total lead generation, expand leader generation into new target markets or audiences, and improve the efficiency of lead acquisition efforts. 

Strategies: Content marketing, SEO, email marketing, partnerships and collaborations, referral programs, social media marketing, paid advertising, and more. 

Key Metrics: Number of leads generated, cost per lead (CPL), lead conversion rate, lead source performance. 

3. Customer Acquisition Cost

Objective: Reduce the cost of acquiring new customers, increase customer lifetime value, and optimize marketing spend. 

Strategies: Improve conversion rates, leverage inbound marketing, and automate marketing and sales tools.

Key Metrics: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

4. Lead Quality

Objective: Increase the percentage of qualified leads, improve lead-to-customer conversion rate, and optimize resource allocation. 

Strategies: Refine targeting by identifying key customer personas, use lead scoring, optimize landing pages, improve content quality, and align sales and marketing teams. 

Key Metrics: Lead conversion rate, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) ratio, lead scoring accuracy, customer lifetime value (LTV). 

5. Revenue and ROI

Objective: Increase overall revenue, improve average revenue per customer, expand into new markets or segments, and increase recurring or product revenue. 

Strategies: Upselling or cross-selling, customer retention and loyalty programs, pricing optimization, expanding product or service offerings, channel attribution modeling, and A/B testing.

Key Metrics: Increase overall marketing ROI, optimize individual channel ROI, and improve sales ROI. 

Define Your Baseline, and Choose Marketing Goals Most Critical For Your Business Success

If you’re starting from square one, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed if you try to attack all of your goals at once. Start by defining your baselines, improving what is most critical to your business growth and success, regularly reviewing and optimizing your results, and layering in new goals and initiatives over time.