What is Marketing?

Marketing is the complex, creative arrangement of various business, operational, data and IT systems as a singular unit, that serves as a surrogate, the market forces that exist between supply and demand.

The difference between a Marketing Consultancy and a Marketing Agency

The professional arrangement along the value chain of the Marketing Journey usually starts with the Marketing Department of an Enterprise, headed by a Marketing Manager who is responsible for connecting the current Value Proposition of the Enterprise with its existing and new markets. Such Marketing manager therefore is responsible for the creation of the Marketing Strategy, and the Marketing Mix & Project Plan to successfully execute it. The Marketing Manager has team members available to support the creation and execution of the Project Plan, and manages it to ensure its success. 

Marketing Agencies offer this function as a service. They are able to assist their client with basic strategy formulation, create the Promotional Mix, assist in identifying the correct Target Audiences and match that to the correct Media Channels, create the Message and get it to these audiences successfully. There are generally two types of Agencies: Traditional and Digital. Traditional Agencies focus primarily on Print, Outdoor, TV and Radio as channels to reach audiences. Digital Agencies focus primarily on Digital channels such as Websites, Social Media and E-Mail Marketing.

Marketing Consultancies specialise on the Strategic part of the Value Chain and focus their energy primarily around building systems that support the Strategy Formulation and ultimately create Brand Equity. Their services are used by Enterprises who is not able to formulate a successful Strategy, and / or have realised that their current endeavours are not contributing towards their Brand Equity Mandate. Marketing Consultancies also work together in partnerships with Marketing Agencies to assist them in the performance of their customer KPI set. An overlap of services between Marketing Consultancies and Marketing Agencies do occur from time to time due to scope creep, resultant from the individualistic needs of their client.

Why is Marketing so important?

Marketing is the lifeblood of any organisation, and without it it will not survive. Many organisations have, since the inception of the first industrial revolution tried to focus on being “Product Oriented”, that is, having a product that the organisation assumes their market will by, and then by advertising such product, expecting sales.  Of course this didn’t work and management teams around the world then resorted to a “Sales Focus”, by replying as many sales people and sales antics they could to try and persuade their market to buy such product.

And this too didn’t work.

Today it is important that Enterprises focus on the “Marketing Concept” by first establishing the needs of their market, and then creating products that offer solution to these needs. When presenting this to its audience, their market naturally responds to these offerings as it resonate with their deepest need.

The Marketing Discipline is a business science that deploys various systems and forms of modern technology to ensure that Brands are successfully able to satisfy the deepest need of their markets.

How do we measure results?

Every Management Team should have access to a live, real-time dashboard that can track the performance of their marketing efforts and analyse how their Brand is performing. Here are some of the critical KPI’’s:

1. Sales Growth
   The best way to measure the effectiveness of the marketing efforts is by measuring the growth in sales revenue. With this metric, the Management Team is able to analyse how much of its total revenue was influenced by the marketing strategies. 

2. Leads
   In a similar fashion, it’s helpful to know the number of leads ther sales team closed. More leads result in more sales opportunities and a better chance of sales growth. 
   For accurate results, the sales-qualified leads (leads considered “sales-ready” based on specific activities completed or lead score) and sales accepted leads (leads the sales team has contacted) are calculated.

3. Lifetime Value of a Customer
   This KPI tracks the revenue a business can expect from one customer over its lifespan. This is a good way to measure company ROI and improve business strategies.
   The lifetime value of a customer is calculated in a few ways using a formula that may vary according to data availability.

4. Digital Marketing ROIReturn on investment assesses monthly and annual performance. Tracking ROI helps business owners plan strategies and budgets for upcoming periods. 
   It is a strong indicator whether the Management Team should continue its efforts or change a particular marketing strategy (depending on the cost).

5. Cost of Customer Acquisition
   This KPI refers to the cost incurred along the journey of acquiring a new customer. With the cost of customer acquisition, the Management Team has accurate information for its Budgeting activities. The cost of customer acquisition is usually calculated by dividing the Total marketing investment by the number of customers acquired.

6. Sales Team Response Time
   Measuring how fast the sales team responds to leads improves customer service and their sales process. 

7. Website Traffic to Website Lead Ratio
   This KPI measures current website visits being converted into leads. It can also indicate the quality of the traffic the website generates. This ratio is improved by iincreasing the conversion rate.

8. Website Lead To Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Ratio
   Management Teams use this KPI to track the quality of the leads that the marketing strategies generate. This ratio indicates the number of the total leads generated by the website that are promoted to Marketing Qualified Lead. If this ratio is low, the quality of your website traffic should be monitored.

9. Quoted To Closed Customer Ratio
   This refers the number of prospects the sales team converts into customers. Monitoring this helps us understand where process improvements are needed.

10. Website Traffic
    This KPI measures the number of visitors visiting your website. Visitors are potential leads that can be turned into customers. Monitoring the website traffic assist in gathering relevant information about the website visitors, ensuring effective marketing campaigns that target the right audiences. 

11. Social Media Reach & Engagement
    Social media KPIs assist in the planning of. social media content  Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have built-in tools that track and analyse this information. 
    Alternative tools and platforms are also available to track and monitor  competitor social profiles.

12. Email Marketing Performance
    Analyse  emails’ open rates, delivery rates, unsubscribe rates, forward or shares and click-through rates to better improve future email marketing efforts. 

13. Inbound Link Building
    This KPI is an important aspect of SEO strategy. The more websites that link to the Management Team’s website, the higher the website traffic that is created.. Inbound links can also increase the website’s rankings. 
    However, caution is neccesary to ensure that the inbound links to the website are from reputable and relevant domains.

14. Landing Page Conversions
    The Management Team is able to assess the number of visitors that visit various landing pages, see which  pages perform the best and have the highest conversions (signed up, downloaded something, etc.) 

15. Blog Post Visits
    This KPI measures current blog posts engagement amongst  customers. Blog posts can boost the amount of traffic the website generates, so it’s crucial to focus to their quality and length.

16. Mobile Traffic Leads and Conversion Rates
    Obtaining data from mobile devices are a given. This data also assist the Management Team in understanding how well the website is optimised for mobile devices, enabling them to increase their reach (thus increasing their leads) and avoid being penalised in rankings by Google. 

17. Organic Traffic/Top Five Entry Pages
    In digital marketing, businesses want the majority of their traffic from organic search, as this shows the number of individuals who found the website on their own. 
    SEO optimisation increases the organic traffic, so this traffic report is vital in measuring the success of the current SEO strategy.

18. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
    This KPI measures customer satisfaction. It shows the likelihood that customers would recommend the business to others and can give the Management Team valuable feedback and insights from their customers. 

19. Follower Growth
    One of the most important KPIs to track on social media is the account’s follower growth. Usually, social media marketing aims to increase brand awareness and audience engagement. The follower count is one easy way to ensure that the social media strategies are working.

20. Search Rankings
    Search engine rankings are one of the most popular digital marketing KPIs used. The website’s placement in SERPs (Search Engine Result pages) is very important. The search ranking is an opportunity to draw more organic traffic (aka traffic you don’t have to pay for.)

Twelve2 Marketing uses its own API-driven dashboard to measure such KPI’s and many more that affect the performance of the Enterprise and track the Equity of the Brand. 

To learn more about BrandTracker, click here.