How to Measure the Impact of My Marketing Initiatives

At any given time, your organization's marketing team may be focused on a handful of initiatives like rebrands, limited-time offers, or new product launches.

So how do you measure the impact of these initiatives?

It's simple — bring in the data.

There are numerous ways to measure a marketing initiative or campaign:

• Did we grow market share?
• Did we get more website views?
• Did we increase revenue?

While these questions are heavily focused on bottom of the funnel impact, you can unlock additional intelligence at the top of the funnel to obtain a more comprehensive picture.

One of those insights is your brand's change in search presence — especially compared to your competition. For a holistic view of your brand's performance, you need to track not only your website performance, but also how your brand appears on third-party services like Google or Bing.

Nearly everything you do from a marketing perspective can impact the digital landscape, from changing a menu item on your website to an entire company rebrand. In order to understand the beginning of the customer journey — the top of the funnel — it's critical to know how your initiatives grow your visibility in search, how likely consumers are to choose your business in search, and how that compares to your competitors.

Your search presence is determined by understanding all the different places your third-party listings and website show up in search, and calculating how likely a customer is to choose your business. Below are a few types of initiatives that can benefit from tracking search presence.

A rebrand is a great opportunity to measure search impact from beginning to end.

If you are looking to rebrand with a new logo or slogan, track your current search presence and then track the impact over time throughout the rebrand process.

Examples of key insights:

• Without search presence tracked: Increase in website views. Unclear of the source.
• With search presence tracked: Increase in website views due to significant increase in search presence against the competition.

Other potential insights:

• Do my competitors have a strong presence for certain categories and keywords?
• What is the impact to my search presence over time, during and after the rebrand?
• How does my search presence compare to the competition, before and after the rebrand?
• Who am I competing with for desired keywords?

Limited-Time Offers

Limited-time offers can be analyzed in a number of different ways, such as revenue or foot traffic increase. One often-overlooked means of analysis is to look at how optimizing your web presence for the offer can result in heightened discoverability — and the impact that has on the frequency your brand is chosen in search. For example, if you are a quick service restaurant releasing a new sandwich, tracking the search presence your brand has for that keyword, and identifying opportunities in search to increase your presence (geography, keywords, competition), can help you to optimize campaigns.

Examples of key insights:

• Without search presence tracked: Increase in search views in certain markets.
• With search presence tracked: Increase in search views due to a 40% increase in search presence for the LTO keyword (passing a major competitor).

Other potential insights:

• What is my competition's search presence for this keyword?
• Where (geographically speaking) does my brand rank well (or poorly) for this keyword?
• How quickly did my brand start to appear in search for this keyword?
• Did this limited-time offer impact the number of times my brand showed up in the local pack?

New Product Launches

Understanding your brand's search presence — along with your competition's — can help you to identify opportunities for new product lines. It can also help you understand the impact those lines could contribute to your brand in search.

Examples of key insights:

• Without search presence tracked: Increase in search impressions.
• With search presence tracked: Increase in search impressions due to 30% increase in local pack presence for new product keyword.

Other potential insights:

• Is there an opportunity to gain market share for this product line?
• Did this product or service make a significant impact in one geography over another?
• Has this new launch helped my brand to pass a competitor in overall search presence? For a specific keyword?
• Did this product or service impact any adjacent keywords? Our overall search presence?