Jon Miller

Measuring the contribution that a given marketing program has on revenue and profits is the holy grail of marketing measurement. As a result, perhaps the most common question marketers ask is, “did this program (this tradeshow, this email blast…) deliver a return on our investment (ROI)?”

This blog post is all about how marketers can answer this challenging question – and build a sensible framework for measuring the effectiveness of their decisions.

Why Measuring Marketing Programs is Hard

It’s easy to ask the question, “What kind of results do my programs deliver?”  However, determining the answer can be very difficult.  Some of the key challenges to marketing program measurement are:

Knowing when to measure.  The money you invest today will have an uncertain impact at an uncertain point in the future.  Last month’s tradeshow may deliver results...

Every business is on a journey to grow and increase revenue. But in order to achieve these goals along the way, you need to align your people, process, and technology.  And how do you get there? Marketing automation technology can help.

In this post, I’ll share some of the basics about this important technology. If you’re new to our blog, read on; if you’ve been around a while, consider checking out one of our more advanced posts such as The ROI of Marketing Automation.

Marketing Automation Enables Modern Business Processes

Marketing has changed significantly over the past few years, and you have to do a lot more with less. Marketing automation helps you achieve success in 4 key ways:

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Creating great content is only part of the content marketer’s challenge. Once you’ve become a frequent publisher of content, you still need people to find it and read it (and ideally share and link to it). Without an effective distribution and promotion strategy, your otherwise brilliant content will sit idle, unread and gathering dust. (And nobody wants that for their beloved content, right?)

That’s why a thoughtful strategy for distributing and promoting your content is essential. This can include email promotions, paid advertising, social outreach, and so on.  But your website is the single most important tool for your promoting content.

Why You Need a Content Resource Center

The problem is: where do you put all your content? In the “old days” before the content marketing explosion, this was much easier – you could simply list a few whitepapers on a webpage and be done. But today, if...

So you’ve decided to buy a marketing automation solution. Now you need to select the right vendor for your company.

Of course, we think Marketo is almost always the best solution—yes, we’re biased. But here’s an unbiased process you can follow to maximize the chances you’ll buy the marketing automation software that is right for your company.

Step #1: Write down your goals for the project

To get where you want to go, write it down. Statistically, you increase your likelihood for success simply by putting your goals on paper.

Hard metrics may include:

• More leads and/or better quality leads
• Improved conversion rates
• Reduced acquisition cost per Marketing-sourced lead, opportunity, or customer

Soft metrics may include:

• Improved Sales-Marketing alignment
• Better visibility into...