Ignore this at your own peril

Are you trying to optimize your marketing campaign but not sure what to optimize? Try one, two, or all of these. Maybe not at the same time as optimizing for many can hurt the optimization of one. More on that later.

• Return on Investment (ROI): This measures the financial return generated for every dollar spent on marketing. It helps evaluate the overall efficiency and profitability of marketing efforts.

• Conversion Rate: The percentage of website visitors, leads, or prospects that take a desired action, such as purchasing or signing up for a service. This indicates how effectively the marketing is driving tangible business results.

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a new customer. Tracking CAC allows you to understand the efficiency of your customer acquisition channels and identify opportunities to reduce costs.

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The estimated total revenue a customer will generate over their relationship with the business. Maximizing CLV relative to CAC is a key driver of marketing profitability.

• Engagement Metrics: Metrics like website traffic, email open/click-through rates, social media followers/interactions, and content views provide insights into how effectively the marketing resonates with the target audience.

And don't forget to analyze the outputs from your optimization in order to realign incentives and feedback loops in your marketing strategy. How? Excellent question.

• Link marketing KPIs and bonuses/commissions to the above metrics rather than vanity metrics like impressions or followers.

• Invest in marketing channels and tactics demonstrating the highest ROI, conversion rates, and CLV.

• Use data-driven insights to continually optimize the marketing mix and messaging for better performance.

• Foster close collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer success teams to align on shared goals and leverage customer data.

• Implement closed-loop reporting to track the full customer journey from the first touchpoint to repeat business.

Keeping a close eye on the optimization process and state of the marketing strategy can be a driver of sustainable growth and profitability for your business. Ignore them at your own peril.