How do you improve from marketing wins and losses?

In my experience, improving from marketing wins and losses entails leveraging the data obtained from measuring these outcomes to make informed decisions for the future. Embracing the notion "numbers don't lie," analyzing the data from both successes and setbacks allows you to identify patterns and insights that can be utilized to transform losses into victories. By carefully counting and assessing these losses, you can glean valuable information that guides your marketing strategies towards greater effectiveness. As a result, the continuous implementation of data-driven improvements will progressively tip the scales, leading to a higher frequency of wins over losses in your marketing endeavors.

First, ask yourself 'What are the business goals for the year?' Once you have the answer in mind you will be able to identify the most important parts of your marketing to measure. By then focussing on these metrics you can then begin to identify the avenues of promotion that are working best for your business and are best aligned with your over business goals. For some businesses sales at any cost is the goal, so the focus would be different than if you were trying to bootstrap growth from a low cost basis.

Measurement and metrics are critical for understanding what's working and what's not in marketing. As a Marketing Consultant, I always advise clients to have clear goals and KPIs that align to those goals before launching campaigns and equally you need tools in the toolbox to help you track the KPIs. Otherwise, you won't know if your efforts are successful.

When thinking about metrics remember to keep your eye on the outcome. Many marketing metrics are leading indicators - they can help you understand whether what you are doing is pushing your target down the funnel, but what really matters is what comes out of the bottom of the funnel. Is your target exhibiting the behaviour you are seeking to a greater degree because of your marketing efforts?

One excellent strategy to learn and enhance your strategies is to analyze your marketing successes and failures. When you succeed, spend some time considering what went right and why. This will enable you to build on that achievement in the future. For instance, you can utilize the insights to guide future app project if a project was successful due to its innovative strategy. When you fail, consider what went wrong and how you might keep from making the same errors in the future. For instance, you can change your managerial or communication approach for future projects if a project failed due to ineffective planning or approach.

Setting relevant benchmarks is critical for context. Don't just compare to yourself historically but also look wider. For digital marketing data, use tools like Alexa, SEMrush, SimilarWeb to benchmark competitive performance for traffic, keywords, conversions. Segment metrics by target audience, campaign type, channel etc. to find areas of over/underperformance relative to benchmarks. Frame performance vs. benchmarks as an opportunity to optimise, not just hard assess. Focus on growth.

1. Give it more time. First, I want to acknowledge that some strategies—like SEO—take a long time to start paying off. If you're investing in your brand image, or if you're relying on inbound channels of traffic to bring you more customers, don't get discouraged after only a few weeks of effort. On the other hand, some strategies -- like PPC advertising -- should start working immediately and improve over time as you make adjustments based on the data. If you're working on a long-term strategy, consider giving your campaign more time to develop. Otherwise, try one of the approaches below.

Marketing tends to be seen as a cost center, and data reports clearly do the work to present it as an investment center with ROI - when the marketing activity is successful! Accessing the data of the competition could be challenging, nevertheless comparing your actual results vs. the previous period, the same period last year and the same type of activity (if done before) gives a complete picture.

Benchmarks are a great way to forecast and compare things in a relative way. That said, some are more reliable than others. Depending on your organization, initiatives, processes, systems, and goals can have a high enough velocity that make some benchmarks irrelevant.

Contextual analysis (SWOT and PEST) should happen before you build your campaign. Context is a critical input into your campaign brief, otherwise you are flying blind. You can then use problem solving frameworks (like 5 why’s) to determine why your campaign or communication was successful or not.

The SWOT is one of the tools I learned at the university, and that I still use. I would recommend to do a SWOT prior to developing the activity, and after it's done to see if anything changed and affected the outcome in a way or another.

In my experience, it's super powerful to invert. Start with the outcome you hope to achieve. Then go to the outputs that facilitate that. Then go to the inputs that make it happen.

By studying successes and failures - not just surface metrics - marketers can uncover the underlying qualitative drivers of campaign results. Extract key learnings around messaging, targeting, budget, and other strategic factors. Implement processes to share insights across the organisation and codify best practices. With this investigative, growth-focused approach, analytics perpetually inform optimization rather than just assessment. The goal is to systematically elevate marketing strategy over time through continual learning.

Marketing is about psychology and understanding consumers. Data doesn't give all explanations. The more you practice, the more you try new activities to attract more customers, the better your understand what triggers your dream customers and attracts sales.

Integrating lessons from previous digital advertising efforts enriches the upcoming campaigns. By scrutinizing analytics, refining targeting, and optimizing content, you create a powerful feedback loop. Insights gained enable more precise audience engagement, higher conversion rates, and improved ROI. This iterative approach ensures each campaign benefits from prior experience, elevating your digital advertising game to new heights of effectiveness and innovation.

To improve from the marketing wins and losses is to learn from the experience and leverage for better performance and desired results. Having put into considerations and evaluation of all the factors required for optimum achievement and growth, progress is guaranteed.

Marketing is a journey, not a sprint. To me, there are marketing wins and learnings. Marketing encompasses many areas from market research to identify opportunities (SWOT, competitive research, and industry research) to target market messaging and visuals, to sales process and distribution. Marketing is an umbrella of many subcategories that all add up to how we communicate our messaging to educate and entice the end user to buy (or keep buying from us) – think about the 7 p’s. Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical Evidence. Across those 7Ps, the probability of missing something or needing to tweak something is highly likely.