Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

Last week I wrote about the marketing metrics we track at Clicks ‘n Conversions and I promised to share the secret to developing a tracking system that drives change. Well, here it is: to be truly useful, a marketing measurement system must do more than just track where you are with certain metrics. It must compare where you are to where you should be.

I’ve come to think of marketing tracking systems as falling into one of three phases of measuring. The first two are by far the most common.

Here’s a look at each phase using “deals in progress” as an example.

Phase I is the tracking phase. When companies first begin measuring sales and marketing activities, they often look at a single number for each metric. In this phase, a monthly report would read something like this:

Deals in progress = 10

But this single number by itself is just a snapshot; and while it’s good to know you have 10 active deals in progress, what does that really tell you?

Phase II is the trend phase. Once you’ve have been tracking metrics for a while, you might begin to include data for previous months. The new report looks something like this:

Better. Now you can see trends. You know if you’re improving at something or getting worse. That’s certainly more informative than just a single number by itself, but does it really give you anything to act on?

Phase III – Plan versus Actual. Here’s what separates trailing indicators from data you can you can do something about. In this phase, we add a third data point – where you expected to be at this point in time. The new report looks like this:

Now you have something really useful. With a quick glance at a chart like this one you would see that you’re running behind plan and if you don’t make a change now, you’ll end the year with too few deals.

Doesn’t this beat the heck out of finding out things are running behind when it’s too late to do anything about it?

This is how we look at our important metrics at Clicks ‘n Conversions. Those little gaps really keep us focused. It’s easy enough to do yourself with few basic Excel skills – and what a difference it will make!