Founder Fuel: How do you measure the success of your marketing efforts?

At different times in a business success means different things. Sometimes it’s measured in Likes and views, other times in ROAS or ACOS, other times it’s in brand recall. But as with most things in business, if you don’t measure you aren’t in control of it. So KPIs for your marketing efforts is an important aspect of understanding if things are working as intended.

I have been drawn to sales and direct marketing approaches in the past because the metrics are easy to collect. I think most small companies should start here. The direct testing enables quicker learning which can then form the backbone of a brand. Where as jumping straight into brand marketing usually requires a lot of assumptions.

With one-on-one sales you get immediate and clear annecdotal feedback about what customers want. Then expand with direct marketing ads to scale those up to 10,000+ people to further refine the messaging and targeting, and test the market further. Finally layering in the branding in a way that applies everything you’ve learned so far.

Easier said than done. People feel compelled to start with a logo.

As you get more sophisticated, something I have not yet explored is Marketing Mix Modeling approaches to measure the effectiveness of marketing. With a complex set of marketing channels in which to budget marketing spend this is probably the best way to assess how it all is affecting sales.

That’s how I think about measuring the success of marketing. This journaling prompt came from Daily Founder Fuel a very short daily newsletter that contains a journaling prompt for founders, entreprenurs and business owners.