6.5 Tools to Track the Performance of Every Marketing Budget.
Marketing reporting and performance tracking seems like it would be the foundation for any marketing program. But as we talked with clients, prospects, and attendees at many conferences this fall, we find that with all of the marketing options today, many people stand there like a deer in the headlights when asked how they are tracking results.
Not tracking marketing performance is like being on the PGA Tour and not keeping score. You just can’t compete and win without doing it.
Here is a list of six tools for your consideration. Let me preface by saying we define what tools we will use at the beginning of each campaign and these only represent a few that we leverage most often. Also, not everything is easily tracked in one solution, so we often take reports from various formats and pull up our old-school friend, Microsoft Excel, to build custom dashboards based on the client’s specific data views.
Great Stats on Social Media as the New Norm.
I am not sure where the sources are for this but it is a great social media video I found posted on Facebook by Amy Wood (http://www.carolinascw.com/theribbit) that really begins to quantify the power of social media. We still talk to too many clients, friends, and even peers that question the longevity of the social media platform but I think this should make everyone realize it is here to stay. If you have any other great stats please share those as well, and their sources.
5 Reasons Our Web Dev Process is a Hit with Clients.
After 13 years of involvement with all aspects of marketing and web development, it seems the three-legged stool of Web development is getting a lot less wobbly and consumer habits, client needs and agency services seem to be far more in sync. Until the last 12-18 months, it always seemed that getting all three of these constituents aligned was difficult because everyone had competing agendas. Agencies wanted portfolio work, consumer habits were still segmented by demographics, and clients were confused. Enter social media.
Not that social media has fundamentally changed everything but it is a pink elephant in the room that got all three parties staring at the same thing. And if you look at what it has done, it has created two expectations from consumers that have forced the hands of clients and their agencies: transparency and real-time content.
So with the tighter budgets that most marketing managers are facing today, it seems that every call we get leads to a discussion on improving the user functionality, management capability, and ROI of their online efforts.
Here are 5 things that we are doing that clients seem to be responding great to these days.
Raising the Bar for University Fundraising.
We just concluded an alumni awareness effort last week for Furman University called http://www.DoNotCallMeAtDinner.com that leveraged database marketing and social media to create a new approach to alumni relations. Although all of the results are not yet tallied, we had some insights that we wanted to go ahead and share.
The campaign was designed to create alumni awareness and increase participation with Furman University alumni while raising funds through online donations. Like most universities, Furman has a Spring Call-a-Thon that yields predictable results but is perceived as an annoyance to many donors. This year the approach was to attack that philosophy head-on and promise not to call alumni at dinner if they made an online gift by May 15, 2009. A parody of the famous Apple/PC television spots was used to help drive home this point.
The success of the campaign was measured on the increased participation from the 90s and 2000s classes of alumni that have historically had lower participation rates in traditional campaigns.
Governor's office calls after parent's Facebook campaign.
Daniel and Tresh Crosby are very dear friends of ours and have a child, Cullen, with special needs. On January 23, 2009 Tresh set up a Facebook Group called CULLY’S VOICE – Therapy Works for Special Needs Children and when I received the invitation that day over 200 people had already signed on. Her mission was to create awareness for a Tefra Medicaid cut that limited the access to physical, occupational and speech therapies for special needs children. In just 10 days over 1,250 people have joined on to show support
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