8 Roles to Keep You On the Right Track

Tracking Roles and the Importance of Them

Imagine that you are driving to your friend’s new home. They recently moved to a new location. You’re semi-familiar with it, but you’ve never actually been there, let alone driven there on your own. Oh, and your GPS isn’t working. All you have are some general directions and your own intuition to get you there.

Now imagine that you get lost on the way, but since you’re not really sure where to go, you’re not really sure you’re lost, either. So you keep trucking along on your original route, getting further away from your end destination. Would you rather be told that you’re moving in the wrong direction, or would you prefer that you discover so on your own?

If you’re like most people, you would probably want to know right away. Why keep driving in the wrong direction? Why get further out from your end goal? After all, you would just have to backtrack and try to discover what went wrong.

Track, Test and Measure to Prevent Getting Lost

Luckily, the above scenario won’t happen to you because we are all graced with GPS trackers and smartphones and Siri who prevent us from doing dumb things like going the wrong way at a two-way stop. (OK, maybe that still happens). When it comes to marketing however, knowing which way to go can be confusing.

Fortunately, marketers are given some tools of their own to ensure they are on the right track. These tools allow marketers to track and measure various metrics to determine their baseline performance and make sure they are improving over time.

While these tools are certainly helpful, it’s not realistic for each role in the company to test each metric. Instead, each role should be responsible for measuring specific metrics that pertain to them, and then informing the rest of the team. With the data in place, brands can make sure they are on the right track, and time is optimized.

How do you know which roles should be responsible for which metrics? Don’t worry. We’ve compiled a guide to help you.

Let’s take a look at eight of the most common roles in today’s companies and the metrics they should be tracking.

Role #1: Email Marketing Managers

Email marketing managers send out email communications for marketing campaigns. The metrics they are responsible for include:

• Open rate: Open rate is found by taking the number of times a message was opened and dividing it by the number of times the message was delivered. The open rate may not be spot on, but it’s an important metric to measure.

• Click through rate: CTR is determined by taking the number of clicks per email and dividing it by the number of emails that were sent. This tells you how many people got the email and interacted with it.

• Unsubscribe rate: Unsubscribe rate is found by taking the number of people who unsubscribed from your email and dividing it by the number of people who received it. Are people interested in your emails or turned off by them?

Role #2: Blog Managers

Blog managers are responsible for writing and editing blog posts, optimizing content for SEO and growing blog subscribers. Their ultimate goal is to develop and sustain a voice for your brand using written and visual content. They should track and measure the following:

• Visits: Visits indicate the number of people who come to your website from an outside source. In order to start tracking visits, you need traffic entering your site. A company blog is a great way to achieve this.

• Leads: When you have succeeded with visitors, you’ll need to track how many leads your blog generates. Eventually, you’ll want to track where these leads are coming from: organic search, direct traffic, social media and more.

• Subscribers: The more people that subscribe to your blog, the more exposure your content is getting. This is how you can start generating quality leads.

Role #3: Sales Enablement Managers

Sales enablement managers have different expectations based on the company, but in general, they team up with the sales department to ensure they are prepared for interactions with leads. They are responsible for:

• Lead-to-customer conversion rate: This tells you the percentage of leads who evolved into customers. There are probably other factors influencing this rate, but you can at least get a rough idea as to how many leads are converting.

• Opportunity-to-customer rate: Sharing similarities with the above metric, the opportunity-to-customer rate looks at a different side of things. It tells you how many opportunities are being created by your sales department and how many leads are converting as a result.

• Content driving conversions: This metric tells you how well your different forms of content are working to convert leads. By knowing which ones are most effective, you can update your content as needed.

Role #4: Social Media Managers

Social media managers must build and maintain your brand’s social media presence. They do this by keeping profiles updated, responding to customer comments and creating shareable content. The metrics they should track and measure include:

• Reach: Social media reach refers to the possible number of people you can reach at a single time. Basically, it’s the number of people who follow you on your social media channels.

• Leads: Social media leads are followers who have engaged with your content on social media. It can include any interaction: a click, share or tweet. This tells you what type of content is most engaging for your audience.

• Engagement: Engagement represents the number of people who actually interact with your posts. You may have a large reach, but engagement is the number of people actually interacting with your posts.

Role #5: Product Marketing Manager

Product marketing managers are responsible for creating a strategy around new product launches and marketing campaigns. The metrics they should be tracking are:

• Adoption rates: You must define what action a customer needs to take before they are viewed as a user of the product. Once this is determined, you can measure the percentage of users who utilize a certain feature of the product.

• Conversion rates: It’s crucial to track conversion rates within the product. Rather than converting visitors into leads, you’re looking at whether your customers are using the product as intended.

• Revenue: Consider which aspects of the product increase revenue for your company. Perhaps these parts deserve more attention or upgrades that will increase more revenue.

Role #6: Conversion Managers

Conversion managers get the lucky job of optimizing content to drive more traffic and get people to convert. The metrics they should be looking at include:

• Organic search traffic: Conversion managers must focus on search traffic coming from organic sources because this determines the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns.

• Conversion rates: Conversion rates determine how well your website is converting traffic into leads. All conversion rates count here: visit-to-lead, lead-to-customer and so forth.

• Click through rate: Conversion managers must measure the CTR across all campaigns rather than just the email marketing ones. Call to actions on blogs, social media and your website can tell you a lot about which visitors are engaged.

Role #7: Campaign Managers

Campaign managers have varied roles, but in general, they oversee marketing campaigns and look for ways to generate leads. They track and measure metrics like the following:

• Total leads: How many leads have been generated from the marketing campaign? This tells you how effective your campaigns are, giving you insight as to what types of content to produce and how to promote it.

• Landing page submissions: It’s also important to look at your campaign’s landing pages and how many people are submitting. This tells you how enticing the offers are and whether they encourage people to act.

Role #8: Sales Managers

Sales managers oversee the sales department. To ensure they are meeting their expectations, sales managers must be aware of metrics like:

• Leads delivered to sales: This metric looks at how many quality leads are delivered from marketing to sales. It ensures that both departments are generating strong leads.

• Sales production: When the marketing department creates leads for the sales department, it’s up to the sales department to close sales with these contacts. You can divide this based on individual team members to determine who is most successful.

• Sales activities: There’s more to being in the sales department than just taking a lead and making a sale. You should also look at overall production of sales employees such as calls placed, meetings scheduled and emails sent. Are there activities being done that aren’t producing sales?

When everyone does their part in tracking and measuring their respective metrics, your company as a whole benefits. You don’t waste time or money in the process, and you can ensure you are on the right track with your marketing goals.

Source: Hubspot.com