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Are Your Marketing Metrics Measuring Up?

Marketers today are constantly being asked to do more with less, and are under more scrutiny than ever to show a tangible return on their marketing investment (ROMI). Marketing without measuring is a futile exercise and measuring can be made easy if you know what to look for and where to find it.  Jake Blumes has spent the better part of his career carrying out marketing experiments and perfecting the art of results-driven marketing. Jakes passion for metrics and measurement has enabled him to excel at lead generation across both traditional and digital channels. His secret to success? Learning how to use different channels – differently, knowing the best tools for each channel, and ensuring the customer experience is consistent through the entire journey.

Traditional vs Digital

Digital marketing tactics have created major disruptions in our industry over the last decade, Blumes notes that although he still manages a significant budget, with the allocations shifting heavily to digital, the overall need for spending has decreased due to the lower cost of digital leads. Specifically, Blumes says he is seeing opportunities in digital tactics, “such as Facebook advertising, but more and more I am looking at native advertising opportunities, using platforms like Taboola or Outbrain to place stories within a news platform, that way the story appears native to that news environment.”

At the top of the sales funnel where you are looking to attract attention and awareness, Blumes has found native advertising tactics pay off, even overpaid content opportunities, “there is a difference between native advertising and paid content – it depends how you distribute it. Native advertising is often out-performing our paid content through Facebook advertising; in terms of what we are spending, leads we can generate and in terms of the quality of the leads.”

Has digital pushed traditional marketing tactics to the wayside? Blumes doesn’t think so at all. He is still largely in favour of traditional mediums in the right scenario, “I wouldn’t give up traditional advertising, but we do run them as separate campaigns in order to measure them individually.  Our traditional ads are always driving people to a landing page, phone number or to some sort of measurable call to action.” Digital and traditional may differ in execution, but measurement is certainly a common denominator.

A Journey of a 1000 (or 10,000) Leads

Jake has been a marketing consultant to Grants International, consistently delivering over 10,000 leads per year. Typically, those leads all start at the top of the sales funnel. Blumes believes that “once you start investing in digital marketing and measurement, it almost innately creates a funnel. You’ve got your impressions at the top of the funnel, you give your prospect a call to action, they move further down the funnel. It takes time but if you track that lead through from beginning to end, it’s easy to see the results”.

Marketing measurement is not a one size fits all approach, the metrics you use will vary from organization to organization depends on your business goals. Jake was clear on this when asked if it’s critical to have a customer relationship management system (CRM) before implementing marketing measurement efforts. Jakes response was that he would need to know more about the business model, what is the business trying to achieve, for example, if you are generating leads, “ask yourself what you will do with the leads, and how will you continue the buyer journey. If you’re launching digital ads, what is the purpose of your ads – awareness, click to purchase, leads being generated for your sales team, etc.” That being said, Blumes noted that if your goal is a financial transaction, “in a direct response business environment, a CRM system goes hand in hand with being able to measure and monitor your advertising efforts”.

Test, Monitor, and Manage

One of Blumes favourite quotes is, perfection is the enemy of progress. This may seem strange for a man who has built a career on the precision of quantitative data, but it’s a reminder that sometimes starting is the hardest part. Jake has learned a lot from simply trying new things, but is wary to know your limitations, “know what you can do and what you can’t do, I am not a graphic designer, so I always hire an expert. When I’m looking to explore new areas, I still see a lot of value in working with agencies who have specific experience with a tool or software.”

Your results may not be perfect the first time but once you start implementing metrics you can improve quickly. Blumes continues to optimize daily, “we use customized landing pages so that the experience as the customer moves through the funnel is relevant to them, we can test them we can test varied text, images, headlines”. For Jake, “It’s all about conversion rate optimization (CRO)”, that’s what drives him to try new things, always monitoring and adjusting to optimize results. “It keeps it fun and it makes it interesting when you can quantify your results and constantly be challenging yourself to be better”.

Stop Guessing, Start Measuring

According to Mark Jeffery who wrote Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know, 55 percent of organizations say their staff does not understand essential marketing metrics and 80 percent do not use data-driven marketing – those who do, are the leaders in their industry.

Blumes has continued to evolve alongside the traditional and digital mediums that have transformed the landscape of marketing. Don’t struggle to find the right marketing metrics and measurement tool, learn from proven experts how to fully maximize your ROMI. Join the CMA August 22, 2018 for a free Facebook live event, Stop Wasting Your Marketing Budget with Jake Blumes.

About the Author – Jenelle Peterson

Jenelle Peterson, BComm MBA is a Senior Marketing & Research Consultant with Tenato Strategy and a board member with the Calgary Marketing Association. Jenelle’s passion for technology, design, and innovation has given her opportunities to work both on client and agency side in a variety of industries; Oil & Gas, IT, Education, Health Care, and Consumer Goods. She loves the outdoors, making bad art, and all things Sci-Fi. Tweet her @petersonjenelle