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How to Crush Campaign Goals

June 19, 2018   /   by  Diane Callihan

Establish Key Performance Indicators Before You Launch

You can create the prettiest, most innovative campaign ever for your clients, but without real, measurable results, they probably won’t be impressed.

Unfortunately, a lot of marketers tend to wait until after a campaign has launched to start thinking about the numbers, and then they go scrambling to the analytics, hoping that at least some of the numbers are awesome enough to prove some measure of success.

There’s a better way. When you start planning your campaign, list the goals you want the campaign to achieve. Ideally, this will already be in your creative brief. For example, a campaign goal might be to increase the number of leads coming in to the client’s website.

Once you have your campaign goals, figure out what metric can measure the success of each goal. If you want to increase the number of leads, you’d first want to determine the benchmark before the campaign (how many leads come in now) and then determine how to measure the number of leads that the campaign brings in. In this case, that metric might be the number of people who fill out the form on your campaign landing page.

Now you can establish your key performance indicators (KPIs) for your campaign. An example of a KPI would be: increase leads on your website by X% over X months via the campaign landing page. KPIs should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.

Work with your team to come up with goals that you realistically think your campaign can achieve, and a reasonable timeframe in which those goals can be reached.

Be sure to gather any benchmark metrics you need before the campaign starts, and then check the analytics regularly and often. Don’t wait until the campaign is over. That way, if it looks like you are not tracking to reach your goals, you’ll be able to adjust and turn things around.

In sum:

  • Define your campaign goals
  • Determine what metrics measure those goals
  • Create a list of SMART KPIs
  • Benchmark
  • Launch campaign
  • Check analytics regularly and often
  • Adjust and optimize
  • Great success!

Taking the time to set measurable goals for success upfront will help you stay focused and provide both you and your client with real results that can prove your campaign’s worth.

Need help with goal-shattering digital marketing campaigns? This is what we do. Let’s Talk.

Diane Callihan

Diane Callihan

With more than 20 years of experience writing for some of the country’s top brands, Diane helped to shape Roger West’s content strategy, lead generation, and PR efforts as Director of Marketing. She currently serves as President of Callihan Content Creation.