As you’re planning your marketing initiatives for next year, it’s important to look back on what you did this year and measure the results against the goals you set at the beginning of the year or quarter. If you planned to increase sales 10% to the hotel industry, what specific strategies did you embark on and how successful were they? If you were expecting to add 20 new LRS accounts, how many did you start selling to?
An obvious measurement tool is a lift in sales or the number of accounts you’re dealing with.
A great way to measure leads from advertising is to ensure all salespeople ask, “How did you hear about us?” Many clients grapple with this, so consider adapting software used by order takers to make it mandatory that this field is filled in before they can move on. Training and educating staff on the importance of collecting this information is critical to getting their buy-in to add this step to their sales process. If you’re running a large and expensive campaign, considering getting a toll-free number dedicated to leads from that campaign, so you can easily track the number of calls coming in to that line. You can also put a particular individual’s name and email in an ad, so that all inquiries are directed to one sales rep.
Evaluating hits and clicks on your website should be done on a regular basis. Adding specific landing pages for ad campaigns you’re running gives you the opportunity to evaluate each campaign’s success. Keep in mind that it’s most important to track conversions to qualified leads.
When you’re setting marketing campaigns for next year, be sure you also discuss how you will measure the effectiveness of each campaign.