Take Control of Your Marketing Performance (even the pretty pictures)

Real talk? I’m a huge Project Runway fan. I just spent the last several months blowing through every season Hulu has to offer. In case you don’t know about Project Runway, it’s a punchy reality TV series where up-and-coming designers compete for recognition (and stardom) in the fashion industry. What I love about it is the boot camp-like experience that forces designers to test their mettle. They work up to 20 hours a day and are given nearly impossible challenges. At the end of the day, the fashionable look they created is worn by a model on the catwalk and they sink or swim.

As a marketer, I can appreciate that type of trial-by-fire experience. We marketers are thrown challenges that we are expected to solve on the fly, then we are measured. Sometimes that measurement is deeply subjective. This is particularly true when it comes to evaluating strategy work.

Project Runway helped me realize that even the most abstract strategy of creative work must come with SMART -- specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time based --  goals that clearly tie back to revenue.
When you’re busy, like so many marketers are, the instinct is to move on after you set a direction, execute the plan and complete the project. But may I recommend that you, well, slow your roll? What you need is a tangible system that you can apply to make you more credible to your stakeholders or quite frankly, yourself. (I’m not sure if there would be multiple systems but you could make it “a tangible system (or systems) that you…”

Measuring Performance of Branding Work

Branding work, graphic design and illustrative image choices feel like straightforward tasks. But performance is at the heart of marketing. All marketing. Even the pretty picture side of it. Avoid treating design as one and done. Push the people you work with to do more, think bigger and figure out a way to test the effectiveness of what you’re doing. Here are examples:

• Make more than one version of the design to test
  
• Get third party validation - use external resources to benchmark best practices
  
• Evaluate performance of A/B testing and adjust after collecting and assessing an appropriate amount of data
  

Measuring Performance of Marketing Strategies

This one is trickier than it seems. Strategies are totally measurable, right? Yup, when they’re fully executed. But how do you keep track as they shift and move along the way?

Some organizations will try to convince you to “relax!” and tell you “don’t worry about it!” As much as I hate to sound paranoid, it makes sense for you to build out performance milestones that can act as scoring, even if it’s just for you. It’ll keep fickle stakeholders at bay when they check in with you to “see how things are going.”

The hardest part of this one is getting buy-in on the milestones. If that proves too much:

• Develop clear outlines, bulleted hypotheses and a method for keeping track of successes and failures
  
• Make note of what their organization can learn from the failures, because this provides valuable insights from what people consider “undesirable outcomes”
  
• Keep a running tally of hours with details of what you’re doing to help give people insights into your activity
  
• Have a clear path for moving forward with performance estimates. ​
  

Measuring Performance for Content Writing

In a perfect content marketing world, you’re involved with the larger content marketing strategy. Real world? Sometimes you’re pulled in to execute on a strategy. When that happens, measurement can be a challenge. One blog article rarely acts as a silver bullet for an organization. How can marketers make the most out of these opportunities? Easy: get nerdy.

I’m sure you’re doing your SEO research.  But consider diving deeper into analytics, asking more questions to help understand the client’s average post performance and learning what their customer path is so you can help guide them (and understand what they’re using to measure your work). Make sure you’ve got the reins to content performance by:

• Getting access to performance metrics like average post performance, time spent on post, and conversion goals
  
• Ensuring that the CTAs are clear and that they serve the larger customer journey (read: know what the customer journey is)
  
• Holding periodic meetings with stakeholders to evaluate performance
  
• Building cross-linking strategies from high performing posts to funnel traffic into your posts ​
  

Summing It Up

By taking responsibility for the performance of your work, what might have been considered a job simply for a service provider can turn into a pattern of success that will keep the accolades coming and key clients coming back.

And when you offer this level of integrity in your tracking and performance for even the most creative of work, you’ll be able to ask for a higher price. You don’t find this type of accountability everywhere and it makes you the exception, not the rule.

What's Next?

SuperDeluxe Marketing is offering expanded content marketing services that take one and done content to the next level. Not only will we dig deeply into your customer’s path, do SEO research, and write excellent content but we now offer ongoing monitoring and regular updates to ensure your content is just as high performing as it is well written. ​