New Metrics for Determining Marketing Success in the Digital Age

Coinciding with the celebration of Carabiner’s 10 years in business, we’re taking a look at how the role of marketers has evolved over time in order to support today’s increasingly digital-focused strategies.

First, a history lesson: In the not “too” distant past, our performance benchmarks were focused primarily on gaining news clips. This was the measure of success back then, as were the number of “impressions” that a story received (based on the periodical’s circulation) and its measured “ad equivalency,” i.e., what such exposure would be worth in comparative advertising dollars.

Things started to change rapidly – say, a decade and a half ago – once the Internet went officially mainstream and usage began moving from 56k modems to more ubiquitous broadband access. Suddenly, more businesses were building websites and target audiences were coming online. Correspondingly, marketers began looking at website traffic in correlation to campaigns and product announcements as yet another way to measure performance.

Flash-forward to the last several years, and the dynamics have sped up even more. Traditional media hasn’t disappeared, but has lost much of its luster as digital strategies continue to provide new ways for businesses to reach audiences directly. These days, marketers including us are much more focused on:

– Web analytics for gaining better insight into prospects’ online behaviors (and catering to them accordingly), and

– The use of social channels to not just reach but engage followers.

In fact, it’s no longer enough for marketers to just reach a lot of eyes and ears with messages. Instead, they’re increasingly being judged on prospect engagement, including how well their programs ultimately contribute to revenue growth.

To this end, effective marketers also no longer simply pump leads into the pipeline for the sales department to handle. Instead, they work at the various stages of the buy cycle, creating engagement programs that nurture prospects into customers, using B2B video, content and drip marketing, viral social campaigns, SEO tactics and more.

>> Want to see how message delivery has evolved over the last ten years? Check out this cool infographic.

One of the things I like most about my job is that it’s always changing. There’s always room for growth and a need to learn more. It’s been a great decade at Carabiner and, so far, a pretty great two-decades-plus career.

Have your marketing and PR tactics evolved properly with the times? What new digital strategies are best impacting your bottom line? We want to know! Carabiner is always here to talk about the new things you could – and should – be doing!