Long gone are the days of, “If you build it, they will come.”
Today, people are so inundated with businesses, products, and services, that you need to do a lot more than just have something to sell if you’re going to get their attention. That’s where your marketing and outreach campaigns come in. These campaigns help you find and drive new leads, increase conversions, and generate higher profits. That is, of course, when they’re done well.
Without proper measurements, though, how can you know?
The good news is that there are plenty of useful tools that can help you measure and analyze your outreach campaigns. Some may be more helpful than others, depending on your goals and what kind of information you’re looking to gather. In this guide, we’ll explore five ways to measure the success of your outreach campaigns, and then we’ll talk about how to choose the best tools for your needs (such as a partnership with Smith.ai to get a dedicated team for outreach campaigns when outsourcing makes more sense).
This is one of the most basic metrics of business. ROI refers to how much profit you get from your initial investment, in this case, from your outreach campaigns. For example, if you spend $5,000 on an outreach campaign to promote a new product or service and that campaign generates $8,000 in new business, your ROI would be $3,000, or 62.5%. The higher your ROI, the more successful your investment in that particular outreach campaign.
Of course, there’s a lot more to metrics than just the return on your investment. More detailed analytics might provide insights that you don’t get from something as basic as ROI.
For those who want to measure the financial effectiveness of their outreach campaigns, this is a good metric to use. The cost per lead focuses on how much you’re spending per lead, not per conversion. Therefore, if you have a $2,500 marketing campaign that generated 25 new leads and 10 sales, your cost per lead would be $100.
Your cost per conversion, using the above example, would be $250, which is another metric that you can monitor to ensure that your outreach campaigns are hitting the mark.
If your outreach campaigns are ad-driven, this is a good metric that can tell you how things are going. In the same way as ROI, ROAS is calculated by taking the amount you spent, subtracting the amount you earned in sales, and then dividing by your investment to get a percentage.
For example, if you spent $2,000 on ads as part of an outreach campaign and those ads generated $3,000 in new business, your ROAS would be 150%. And like your ROI, the higher the percent, the better you’re doing. This is a good way to see where your money is being used most effectively on advertising and where you can make improvements.
This is the ultimate metric to measure the success of your outreach campaigns. That is, of course, if your goal is conversions. We know what you’re thinking: Isn’t everyone’s goal to get conversions?
Yes, and no. For example, you may be working on finding new audiences or working on outreach on social media where you’re testing engagement. In those cases, you may not be measuring conversion rates specifically.
The conversion rate metric is one that a lot of people get fixed on, but it’s not the only measurement of success. In fact, when it comes to growing your outreach, it might be one of the last items on your list. If you’re doing everything else right, after all, the conversions will come.
Outreach campaigns are usually about finding new audiences and reaching new targeted leads. Therefore, measuring traffic metrics could be a great way to keep tabs on your efforts. For example, if you set up outreach efforts on social media and your website, monitoring the traffic coming from each campaign will help you see what’s working and what isn’t.
You can work with a variety of traffic sources in your outreach campaigns, so when you are measuring your results, you may find that you have several different items listed on the report. You can also customize your metrics to monitor certain traffic sources or note when leads come from a certain place.
Where are people coming from and how are they finding your business? This is an important item to know if you’re going to continue to drive success with your outreach efforts.
Of course, in addition to the items listed above, there are plenty of other metrics that should be on your list. These can help you monitor your efforts and give you a full picture of how things are going. Again, the exact metrics that you choose will vary from one person to the next, but you can also monitor:
Ultimately, the goal is to figure out which metrics will best help you succeed with your outreach campaigns. Then, you can customize your analytics dashboard to make sure that you’re getting the insights that you need to improve your efforts. With the tools available today, it’s never been easier to monitor your outreach and make it more successful.
You’ve got a lot on your plate as a business owner. Your sales team has a pipeline full of leads that need their attention, but you can’t give up on your outreach efforts, either. What are you to do? Partner with the virtual receptionists at Smith.ai and we can provide a team to handle your outreach campaigns, along with support for lead intake and appointment scheduling. We can even serve as your 24/7 answering service so you never miss an opportunity.
To learn more, schedule a consultation or reach out to hello@smith.ai.