How to effectively allocate your marketing spend (Part 2 of 2)

Launching marketing programs can work well for your business, but you will never truly know how much unless you can measure the success of the money allocated.

At Utility Keystone, the company’s “marketing funnel” starts with four core KPIs: impressions, which turn into website sessions, into leads and finalize in deals or equipment sold, Marketing Coordinator Quint Eno says. Within those four KPIs, the dealer measures success through other metrics:

“We consider all these metrics when looking at efficacy. We typically evaluate each KPI monthly and review increases/decreases to determine what’s working and what’s not,” Eno says.

Some people will contend Facebook usage has gone down and Instagram has gone up; however, Instagram is owned by Facebook and “any time we build a campaign in Facebook, it automatically translates over to Instagram. If we’re getting more engagement with Instagram, we can shift more budget over toward that platform,” Melissa Moss, senior director of digital marketing, Randall-Reilly, publisher of Trucks, Parts, Service, said in TPS’ Used Truck Guide.

Stephanie Ott, marketing manager, Mid-State Truck Service, says she performs calculations every six months after a new marketing program has been undertaken or an existing one has been tweaked.

“For example, we’re buying into radio campaigns, so in six months I’ll do a ROI calculation to see how much growth there is. It can be trickier for digital marketing because it can take up to a year to see the real results,” she says.

Kristin Oftedahl, marketing communications manager, Rihm Kenworth, says tracking ROI is key to knowing how ads and campaigns are performing.