Are you measuring marketing success based on sales numbers?

Good, but not great.  Growing sales is what we all want to see and the ultimate goal of any marketing initiative. Until a sale is closed or a customer is acquired, many other interactions happen and they also need to be measured for success. A sale is a process, nothing new here, and marketing can have an impact before, during and after each sale step whether it helps generate a lead, raise awareness, provide additional confidence or educate.

It can be online advertising, webcasts, blogs, events, email marketing or a number of other marketing tools, each plays a different role and supports customer engagement, acquisition and retention. If any of the marketing steps chosen as part of the strategy is not well executed, the whole sales process may be affected.

So, we shouldn’t be too fast in only measuring marketing success based on sales numbers. Not only because many times the sales process can be long and the full impact cannot be measured yet, but also because it could also be too late in the process to find out that what is missing has actually affected steps before the closing. Having other checkpoints around your marketing strategy and sales process to evaluate success is crucial. Any marketing plan or strategic should have specific metrics aside from sales to measure impact.