An MQL is a prospect who’s shown some interest in your brand. It helps to work out the quality of a lead a sales team will deal with.
The metric is particularly important as it helps marketing and sales work in tandem—the former generates a relevant lead, the latter helps to finalise the conversion.
MQLs work with your sales department to work out the effectiveness of sales accepted leads (SAL).
SAL identifies prospects through the sales process. So that means it’s mid-funnel after qualification from marketing.
These are potential customers who have shown interest in receiving content from you.
So, it’s very important if you have a blog. You can then adjust your campaign as you see fit, as well as ensure your SEO metadata is researched and written to bring in relevant traffic.
Knowing when and where your business receives a mention based on your marketing efforts is essential.
This can be quite complex as there are many areas channels and platforms to monitor to find mentions of your brand or work.
You can use the likes of Google Alerts to track this, it’s sometimes reflected in your web traffic from referral sessions.
Social media is another source to track—using software to track mentions can help to simplify the process.
SEO is also important, such as the backlinks that are driving content to your website.
Ultimately, many services also provide tools to help you monitor impressions, such as with Facebook, Google AdWords, and independent services like Sprout Social.
This can provide details into what customers (and potential customers) are looking at when they arrive at your site. Key metrics are:
Understanding this can help you to optimise campaigns as and when you need to. Such as with website copy, which you can alter to promote more conversions.
Often called customer acquisition cost (CAC), this is where you evaluate how much it’s costing your team to bring in a single customer.
If this is costing a lot of money, then that’s not efficient marketing.
You can calculate your CAC easily enough:
If that customer is then spending $100 that’s a good way to gain a profit.
Measuring your revenue from marketing campaigns helps you to understand its worth alongside the overall cost.
It’s a complex issue to get right, given the various campaigns you can be running simultaneously. You can refer to Return on Marketing Investment (ROI) for detailed insights.
Customer lifetime value (CLV) takes a look at the sales from a specific customer.
So, if there’s a particularly loyal individual who regularly shops with you, there’s a chance to see the income they provide to your business.
This can help determine who’s a valuable customer.
That can lead to opportunities such as tailoring sales packages for them to promote products, further enhancing your long-term sales relationship.
A system that tabulates the number of customers visiting you, with the aim of keeping them coming back for more.
With widespread competition in the modern business world, establishing a lasting customer retention rate is more difficult than ever.
Understanding their purchasing habits is key to this, so delve into your data to see:
There are other metrics, but those are some of the essential ones. But even if you only have the resources to track a few of them, it can keep your campaigns on track.
They’re all-important and a decisive marketing campaign is lost without them—your business needs marketing metrics.
They help steer your campaigns towards success, rectify failures, and provide ROI.
What you target is dependent on your business goals. But analysing the right metrics to follow can prove highly lucrative.
Don’t miss out—speak to your marketing team, or refer to an industry expert for guidance.
