Digital marketing campaigns can be remarkably effective, but you won’t know how well you’re doing unless you have digital marketing feedback loops. Establishing feedback loops is the last step in the sales maximization process. This will allow you to continue refining and improving your digital marketing plans to reach greater revenue growth.
What is a Digital Marketing Feedback Loop?
There are many kinds of feedback loops. Anytime that you take an output from a process and use it as an input, this is a feedback loop. You use feedback loops all the time. Let’s say that you haven’t been exercising, but some friends invite you to join them for a charity 5K run. You figure you’re in pretty good shape, so you agree.The day after the run, you are so sore you can barely move. That’s the output (or result) of your run. So, you use it as input for the next time you decide to run a 5K course, and schedule workouts beforehand that will prepare you to complete the 5K without straining your body.You are probably familiar with a customer feedback loop. If a customer offers a suggestion on your social media, the best practice would be to respond to that feedback and incorporate it into your marketing. If a customer has an issue with your service, the best practice would be to do something to satisfy the customer and update your procedures to avoid a similar problem in the future. It’s really a matter of getting into your customer’s head to improve your product or service.In another example, your sales and marketing departments should work together to review the results of their efforts to improve their future results. Regular meetings between sales and marketing employees can provide insight into what is working and what isn’t. This marketing loop can help you improve both your sales and marketing. The feedback from sales to marketing and from marketing to sales will allow each department to fine-tune their strategies.In digital marketing, it’s possible to automate the feedback loop. But the first step is to decide what results you’re going to analyze to use as input to your digital marketing process.
KPIs Drive Digital Marketing Feedback Loops
You can use key performance indicators (KPIs) to drive your digital marketing feedback loops because they define the things you need to do in order to maximize your sales. One of the most common pitfalls companies fall into, when they try to maximize sales, is that they haven’t defined KPIs to guide them. If you don’t define KPIs, you can’t optimize your sales and marketing processes. As the famous saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If you want different or better results, you need to change your approach. KPIs show you where changes will have the most impact.Digital marketing KPIs can address a variety of topics, depending on your operation. You need to measure KPIs across marketing and sales funnels. This will allow you to fine-tune media buys, messages, and audiences. The result will be that you make stronger media buys leading to better quality leads, which lead to increased sales and lower cost per sale. However, there are some KPIs that are needed by almost every business, for example:
- Media KPIs: Clicks, Conversion Rate, Cost per Lead
- Sales KPIs: Number of MQL, SQL, Opportunities, Sales, MQL to SQL Conversion, Cost Per Sale
- Business KPIs: Target Revenue, Lifetime Value of a Customer
You can set targets for each of the KPIs you track. It can be a challenge if you haven’t been in business long or if you’re new to setting up KPIs The important thing is to get started. You can always adjust your assumptions as you gain experience collecting and analyzing the data. Digital marketing advanced analytics will help you track the KPIs that will make a difference in maximizing sales.
Optimize Your Campaigns Frequently
The power of feedback loops is that you use them to improve what you’re doing. Plan on optimizing your campaigns often, especially if you’re just starting out. Over time, you will see trends being established and you’ll understand how to take the output from a feedback loop to refine your process. At that point, you’ll want to review the feedback to make sure that you’re meeting the KPIs you established, but you won’t need to spend as much time revising your plans.Evaluate these six key areas when you’re responding to feedback from your campaigns.
1. Your Audience
Make sure you’ve identified the right audience. In most cases, you’ll need more information if you’re not sure you’ve identified the right audience. You can fine-tune your view by experimenting with the subsegments of your existing audience.
You could try creating subsegments based on income, title, age, gender, industry, and more. You may find that analyzing the success you have with those subsegments will lead you to redefine your audience.
2. Channel Performance
Keep a close eye on which channels are producing the best results. You can reallocate your budget accordingly.
3. Messages
Identify where there is ad copy that isn’t performing as well as you think it should. Refresh that copy to improve the response. You can also change the content on your landing pages to find better-performing messages.
4. Assets
You’ll need a range of assets to do digital marketing. Those assets can include landing pages, eBooks, white papers, infographics, blog posts, email templates, ad copy and variants, sales collateral, and more. Check your asset performance for each channel, using A/B testing to see what best attracts your audience and motivates them to take action.
5. Campaign Tactics
Look at your data arranged by audience and subsegments to determine if the assumptions you made about your audience are valid.
6. KPIs
You may find that you need to change, add, or remove KPIs based on the campaign data you’ve collected.
Start With the Right Software Solutions
Before you start any campaign, make sure that you have the right tools to help you manage your marketing activities effectively. Typically, these are the minimum software requirements:
- Social Media
- Marketing Automation
- CRM
- Sales
- Analytics System
- Tag Manager
There are different ways to acquire these software requirements, and there is a solution for every budget. One important feature to look for is integrating these tools for even greater insight. One critical element to setting up a feedback loop is connecting your CRM to your media platforms. For example, consider the power of connecting your CRM to social media.Once your social media and CRM are connected, you’ll learn a great deal about a prospect’s background and demographics. You’ll also learn about the prospect’s buying behavior and interests. The more you know about your prospects, the better you will be able to identify whether they’re likely to become a customer.It will also be easier to stay in touch with a prospect because you’ll know if they’ve responded to a post you’ve published, and you can engage with them in a place they frequent without making an appointment.
How to Maximize Sales: A Summary
In our five-installment series “Maximizing Sales,” we have covered a lot of ground.
- Installment 1: We talked about the importance of changing your mindset to focus on maximizing sales as opposed to maximizing leads. We also discussed the obstacles that usually prevent a business from maximizing sales.
- Installment 2: We explored the relationship between sales and marketing departments. We discussed why those two departments need to work together.
- Installment 3: We discussed the power of defining marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) and discussed how aligning the sales and marketing departments can help you maximize sales.
- Installment 4: We described sales and marketing funnels and discussed how you can optimize those funnels to maximize sales.
- Installment 5: This final installment defined the KPIs and feedback loops you can use to continue to fine-tune your digital marketing strategies and thereby maximize sales.
Symphonic Digital brings a wide range of marketing expertise in multiple industries and verticals to assist our clients in maximizing their sales. Our collective experience and commitment to excellence keep us at the forefront of digital marketing solutions and technology. When you want to find ways to maximize your sales, the performance-driven marketing experts at Symphonic Digital can help. Call us at 888-964-3498 or send an email for more information.
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