As the old adage goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. That’s especially true in marketing. Some companies use advanced (and expensive) platforms and programs to measure their progress and optimize strategies. While there’s no question these systems help, you don’t have to invest in costly technology or data analysts to determine the impact of your marketing efforts.

What can you track?

Even without paid programs, you can still measure the performance of your marketing efforts and thought leadership. Some the areas you can track without advanced tools include:

• Website page views, bounce rate and session time. Google Analytics is a free service that helps marketers gain insight into how visitors find and use your website. By evaluating which pages are the most popular, how quickly people move onto another page or the overall time they interact with your content, marketers can measure engagement and refine strategies.
• Search engine referrals. Google Analytics can also tell you what keywords people used to land them on your website. Tap into this information to optimize your website’s content using these hot search buttons.
• Social media shares. When people share your content on social media, it’s a sign that your voice in the marketplace matters. While individual platforms have built-in analytic programs to measure engagement, free tools such as Muck Rack can provide deeper insights.
• Industry influencer shares. Big voices in your marketplace can amplify your reach when they share your messages with their followers. Identify key thought leaders, interact with their posts and work toward a collaborative approach to content sharing.
• Press mentions. Simply enter your company and thought leaders’ names into Google Alerts and you’ll receive notices when your brand, campaign-specific hashtags or other keywords appear in the media. Keep in mind results are based on analysis of websites and don’t include social media mentions.
• Email campaign engagement. Depending on the size of your database, some email marketing programs are available for free. Mailchimp, Sendinblue and Benchmark are no-cost platforms that can tell you who is reading your emails and how they interact with the content.

Measuring marketing ROI

It’s not enough to guess at what is and is not working in your marketing strategy. Tools exist to help you track results, measure ROI, analyze engagement and automate communication with your prospects and clients. As your marketing efforts grow, you will eventually hit a limit on how much you can accomplish without the right tools. But even expensive systems are meaningless if the data they produce isn’t put to good use. To learn more about how to use your data to transform future marketing programs, contact Trade Press Services today.