This system will help you turn your startup’s marketing plan into a science.
Remember what it was like 10 years ago, when marketing in a startup technology company meant going to a few trade shows, putting out some press releases, writing a blog post from time to time, and hoping for the best?
OK, I may have exaggerated a bit. But from my experience, marketing today in the high-tech and B2B world is a whole other ballgame than it used to be.
There are literally hundreds of different metrics tools available to marketers today, and more will undoubtedly continue to enter the market. One has to wonder, how do you know where to begin and which tools are truly the most effective?
It starts with a deep breath. Then you take it one step at a time:
Step 1: Define what you want to measure
No metric tool in the world will be useful unless you know exactly what you’re measuring and why. This begins by defining your marketing goals and understanding all the processes to achieve those goals.
Some great questions to ask yourself include:
- Who is in charge of qualifying leads?
- How are they expected to qualify them?
- How many leads are needed in order to support the sales organization?
- How are those leads going to be obtained?
- How do you measure whether leads are strong, from a quality and quantity perspective?
It’s also key to measure your search engine optimization (SEO) and ensure that the messages and keywords you want to focus on are coming across in your search results. It’s not always about quantity when it comes to SEO; quality is a big factor, as well.
On an ongoing basis, you’ll also note that some marketing goals are more measurable than others. While it’s easy to track how many people registered for a webinar, or got scanned at an industry conference, it’s not as easy to know how many people read a press release or listened to your speaker present at an event.
