“How can I tell if what you’re doing is really working?” This is a sentence that every marketer has heard in the past, will hear in the future, and never wants to hear again. While our ability to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, especially digital campaigns, has increased tremendously over the past ten years, there is still a certain level of unknowability to the true impact marketing can have on your business.
Let me illustrate what I mean with a true story. A young fellow, let’s call him Bret, was cruising through Instagram one day. Bret saw a post from a company that he thought was exceptionally well put together so he followed that company. Fast forward 730 days and Bret makes his first purchase from that company he followed two years ago, it’s a shirt for his sister.
So the question has to be raised, “how the heck do you track that?!” The simple answer is that you can’t. There is no doubt the Social Media Manager at that company directly impacted my decision to buy and if not for their social media presence would not have gotten the sale. More than likely that person did not remember the post that drew me in and quite possibly doesn’t even work at the same company right now.
In 2018, an estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide purchased goods online, totaling $2.8 trillion in sales. With the continued rise of e-commerce, the traditional sales funnel has died and been replaced by the sales flywheel. Where the funnel viewed customers as the last piece of the puzzle, the flywheel puts customers right in the center. The flywheel understands that each customer has their own distinct buying journey and that when ready that customer will make a purchase they feel is right.
We need to come to realize that tracking every aspect of a marketing campaign is not plausible. Instead, we need to focus on developing messages that resonate and put our customers in a position of power to make an informed buying decision. Some will respond to marketing efforts immediately and some may take weeks, months, or even years until that marketing pays off, but it will pay off. There is no need to stress that every marketing dollar from your budget isn’t accounted for because there is probably someone in your store right now that saw your ad months ago and decided to finally stop on in.
So as we move through 2020 put your focus on your customers, the flywheel, and let your marketing speak for itself!
