Most businesses market across a variety of channels at once. It could be:

Social media
Email
Paid search
Organic content
Referrals
Influencer programs, etc.

The challenge isn’t the activity. It is knowing which of those channels make an impact.

Otherwise, marketing decisions are made on gut feel. Or on the channel that at that moment is getting the most visible surface-level metrics. However, none of that reliably indicates where the real value is.

So how do you know what is working? Read on!

Start with attribution that reflects reality

Attribution is the system used to track and credit the conversion, lead, or sale to marketing touchpoints that helped it happen. Most businesses follow the default attribution model in which they attribute a result to the last channel that the customer engaged with before converting.

This model overestimates channels like paid search that only drive conversions at the bottom of the funnel. It underestimates channels such as social media content and email that drive consideration and awareness earlier in the funnel.

Adopt a Multi-Touch attribution model. This credits across the entire TouchPoint chain. It provides a much more transparent view of the channel mix that is most effective in achieving results.

Connect strategy to measurement from the start

The most obvious indicator of a marketing measurement issue is when the analytics dashboard is filled with data. But no clear direction emerges from it for decision-making.

Every piece of content and campaign should be produced against a documented strategic objective. This way, the metrics used to evaluate performance can be tied directly back to whether that objective is being achieved. Rather than measuring activity in isolation from intent.

Custom-trained AI marketing software helps to anchor content creation and campaign activity directly to a defined marketing strategy. It streamlines marketing by making this connection explicit from the outset.

Avoid relying on vanity metrics

Some metrics appear most impressive in a weekly report. But they don’t give an honest review of a channel’s performance. For example:

Follower counts
Impressions
Likes

A social channel might have high engagement. But it doesn’t drive website traffic, generate leads, or influence a purchase. In such a case, it’s doing well on the platform and poorly for the business.

Define which metrics are most relevant to the desired business goals, such as:

Cost per lead
Conversion rate per channel
Revenue driven by specific content
Email click-to-purchase rate.

This shifts the measurement conversation from how much activity is happening to what that activity is producing.

Maintain uniform tracking throughout all channels

One of the most frequent causes of marketers’ inability to properly compare performance across channels is inconsistent tracking. That is, conversion goals that are defined differently across platforms. They all result in data that is unreliable for comparison or action.

The unglamorous but crucial work that makes everything else possible is establishing a consistent tracking framework, which includes:

Clear UTM conventions
A single source of truth for conversion data
Standardized definitions for what constitutes a lead or a sale.

The takeaway

It takes more than just monitoring clicks or impressions to determine the effectiveness of a marketing channel. Good AI marketing software can streamline marketing analysis with multi-Touch attribution and predictive performance analysis. It assists you in determining which activities impact outcomes and where to concentrate your marketing efforts.