Inbound Marketing University

Depending on the client, there various KPI's that we'd try to work into a results report.

The first is did the web site receive more overall impressions. If the client believes this is important, we'll add it in, along with Unique visitors, the top rated page, etc.

Sales (both web and offline) is another indicator. The more sales our clients have, the better, we argue, our campaign(s) are performing.

Social Buzz. Twitter followers. Facebook fans. Community perception (hard to gauge without a study). Free press. Competitor's activity (removing any special events such as Grand Openings, etc).

For one of our healthcare clients, we measured the number of people that registered for a free event on plastic surgery, and then would also measure how many actually showed up. They would be asked where they signed up (either a clinic, at the hospital, or online), if they were a referral (for reconstructive reasons) and where they saw or heard the ad. Interestingly enough, between radio, print and online, radio and online usually were equally divided and print was low. When we threw cable into the mix, it was cable, online, then radio. Out of home also did well...but likely due to proximity (there was a board that we kept right outside the speaking location).

We did use some third party studies, and we would compare business numbers YOY vs. ad spend, YOY, and then look for outliers in the market (for snow tires, if sales fell, we'd look at the average snowfall vs the activity in other years.)

I am sure there are others, but I was trying to think of the clients that were tricky to measure...that did not rely on sales, but other KPIs.

Jeff Louis