Consistent improvement always delivers. Trust the process.

This year has been one for improvement across several metrics and on a personal level.?

There are several things that go into making and inevitably improving it and I won’t be saying I have discovered the key or panacea for everything marketing.

I like taking data deep dives because in there, you find a story. If the data is well structured, the story can be rich, varied and quite insightful.?

As we get to the tail-end of 2022, I have been taking a recollection of the milestones, challenges and areas of improvement to make in regard to marketing at BrighterMonday Uganda. That story is one of outstanding transformations from 12 months ago.

First signs of improvement;

Better processes make for better results. The first sign of improvement this year came in form of a reorientation of the team setup, strategy and giving the brand more control to experiment and localize the execution.

This created more process ownership which also meant embracing the outcomes fully because the team had more control and accountability for their performance based on their strategy & execution.

In a nutshell, get the process and people (team) right first…then trust them to execute and deliver. Support is also crucial which is why we heavily utilize the broad support across our Pan African parent company The African Talent Company (TATC) for ideas across Kenya, Nigeria & Ghana.

Understand the business goals;

As marketers, we often get the stick for being misaligned with business goals. I don’t wholly agree with this assessment but I understand why and where it comes from.

This is why the improvement we saw this year was based on understanding the critical business goals. Where does growth matter most and why should we focus on those areas for example leads and signups.

These business goals drive the topline (revenue) and the better the quality of leads, the higher the conversion rate.

In order to sustain the growth, we also dedicate efforts to maintaining the platform user base and brand’s profile on social media, that way, we grow the business and platform users simultaneously.

Measuring the right metrics of success;

With the focus on the business goals, it becomes easy to pick the right metrics to measure success. For leads, the obvious metric is number of leads. Thanks to Microsoft Power BI & our BI Analysts, we are able to further breakdown by lead source & industry they are coming from.

This information also translates when we are looking at the deals won and closed from those leads which enables us to predict trends, refine our strategy and focus on the aforementioned business goals.

The deals that close bring in revenue which assists in evaluating the most effective channels and lead-gen strategies and most importantly, calculating our return on investment (ROI) for marketing spend.

This year, we have recorded an astounding 105% improvement in ROI while spending 25% less than we did in 2021.

This efficiency speaks to our dedication to be consistent. Throughout the year, we have seen highs and lows but we’ve remained consistent to the overall goals we know will impact the business and marketing KPIs.

We are now seeing the whole picture and the results are telling;

• Platform users are up 25%, actually the best performance ever on this metric.
• Our sessions are up by 60%, the best performance since 2019.
• Page views are up by 62%, also the best performance since 2019.
• Application leads grew by 110%, reaching an all-time high for the brand.

Some quarters were unremarkable, others were a blow-out and at the end of the year, we have a verdict; our strategy worked, the team was in sync and the execution was near flawless.

For more on how companies make the leap from good to great, check out this article I wrote a while back.

Now we take it apart and go again in 2023.