« Inbound Marketing Metrics: 5 Key Measurements »

When you work in the marketing department of a midsize to large corporation, such as an insurance company, healthcare organization or manufacturing company, it’s hard to ignore the growing curiosity among executives about the value and effectiveness of social media marketing (a.k.a. content marketing, inbound marketing, internet marketing, eMarketing, etc.). For the purposes of this post, I will refer to these new marketing methodologies as inbound marketing.

New Marketing Metrics for New Methodologies

In today’s tight economic climate, companies like yours are looking for ways to reduce marketing expense while improving marketing results. This may entail new thinking and pushing yourself past your marketing comfort zone comprised of tradeshows, print advertising, direct mail, etc. While these tried and true traditional marketing methods have worked well for your company for decades, they can be enhanced and even replaced with newer inbound marketing methodologies. These can include strategically optimized websites, product-specific blogs, high-value educational white papers/ebooks (that can be downloaded by prospective customers in exchange for contact information), email lead nurturing campaigns, social media publishing and engagement, webinars, and many other digital media options.

5 Marketing Metrics that Matter Most to Executives

When you implement an inbound marketing program built for customers to find you through a variety of online communication channels, there are certain metrics that are critical to measuring and communicating success to your company’s top managers and executives. According to inbound marketing expert Mike Volpe at HubSpot, the five key inbound marketing metrics that matter most to executives include:

1. IMPROVED WEBSITE GRADE. This metric is available for free from HubSpot’s Website Grader SEO Tool. Simply plug in your URL and get a score from 1 to 100. This tool can even compare your score with those of your competitors. Very cool. Very powerful. And very easy to understand.
2. INCREASED WEBSITE TRAFFIC. You want to pay attention to the total number of unique visitors to your website over a time period, usually a month. This is the perfect metric to give executives a sense of the overall interest in your business. Steady growth in unique visitors is proof that your inbound marketing initiatives are working.
3. INCREASED LEADS. Visitors can be converted to leads right on your website. One way that individuals can officially become leads directly on your website is by filling out a form that provides contact information in exchange for downloadable content, such as a white paper or ebook. Tracking leads is one of the most important metrics for measuring the success of your inbound marketing efforts.
4. INCREASED LEAD CONVERSION (a.k.a NEW CUSTOMERS). Once you have obtained contact information for a lead, you can nurture that lead through a series of informational emails and, when appropriate, telephone conversations. You will want to track how many leads convert to actual new customers on a monthly basis. It may take some time (on average 12-16 weeks) to get your  inbound lead conversion engine humming. But, once it is, your monthly new customer numbers will be what resonates most with top managers and executives.
5. IMPROVED CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST. According to HubSpot’s Mike Volpe, “Many businesses don't compute this on an ongoing basis, but knowing the total sales and marketing cost for each new customer (on average each month) is important. It gives you a good sense of how your business is going, and if it is getting easier or harder to grow.”

What Do You Think?

One of the things that is most attractive about inbound marketing is the fact that you can provide detailed metrics that prove what is working. The above list just scratches the surface of what you can measure. Do you agree with the metrics cited above as being the ones executives care about most? What would you add to this executive-level metrics list? Please share your thoughts in the comments section. And, as always, thanks for reading.