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Your Marketing, Traffic, SEO, or Website Performance Presentation – Is it Ready for Prime Time?

When you send your reports to your boss, what are you focusing on? Likes, clicks, followers, increased traffic, conversions and customers? Chances are, you are tracking all of this data. But have you ever asked your boss what numbers and data they are really interested in? Is it the numbers that send new projects flying your way? Or data that provides that much-needed marketing budget increase your team is waiting for? Before prancing into your presentation, double-check that you are providing results for the 5 metrics your boss actually cares about.

1. How much is your company paying to acquire new customers?

An easy method to figure customer acquisition cost is to divide overall sales and marketing costs by your new customer total. Keep in mind that if marketing budget has increased, yet your new customer numbers have not, your ROI is not going to be fabulous. If you find yourself in this position, don’t panic. Present a solution. Inbound marketing is typically less expensive and more effective than outbound marketing, creating a lower customer acquisition cost.

2. What is the marketing cost for new customer acquisition?

To provide an accurate number for marketing costs, you need to remove sales from the picture. Include only expenses, salaries, commissions, etc. that belong solely to the marketing department. The cost you uncover will provide real data on how your marketing department is performing and how much impact the department really has on new customer acquistition. Also, it will shed a bit of light on how sales is performing. If your marketing costs continue growing and your customer acquisition is not growing in tandem, then your expenses are too high. It’s possibly time to consult an experienced agency to see where your team could cut back on expenses and become more effective at the same time.

3. Customer Lifetime Value : Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio

Your boss needs to know the company’s customer lifetime value – how much they spend on your services during a typical partnership together – compared to customer acquisition cost. Obviously, if it is costing more to keep your customers than it is to acquire new customers, it’s really time to reconsider your current marketing methods.

4. Customer Lifetime Value – Acquisition Cost = High ROI Payoff? 

Do you know how long it takes for your company to recover the customer acquisition cost? Paying off customer acquisition cost as soon as possible may not be possible in all cases. For example, with subscription or membership based companies, the ideal goal is to payoff customer acquisition costs within the first 12 months. How do you figure out this number? Average the monthly customer profit at the current subscription or membership rate, then figure out how long it will take them to pay back their customer acquisition cost.

5. Tracking customer traffic sources and conversions like a boss, for your boss

The majority of our clients are not actively or accurately tracking the percentage of new business driven directly by marketing efforts, or even where they are coming from. Customers can be lead to your company by a variety of sources: word of mouth, just driving by, referrals. What you really need to know is the percentage of new customers that reach you through your marketing efforts and where each specific type of lead originated. Were they lead through emails, social media, website content, blog posts, or search engines? If seeing exactly how much your marketing team or current agency is worth gives you heart palpitations, spend some time talking to other agencies and speaking with their references in regards to their ROI for their clients and how they do it.

Hopefully you’re not searching job websites and questioning your career choice by this point…

Keep in mind that marketing efforts also provide interaction with existing customers, leading them through the buyer’s journey and keeping your company top of mind. Email, social media, refreshing relevant content, and other methods, all provide current customers with vital information, help your company stay ahead of the competition, and more often than not will lead to future purchases, referrals, or upsells down the road. Mentioning this and showing how you are accomplishing it will provide your boss the big-picture impact of your marketing efforts.

Data, data, data… it’s incredibly important, yet can be incredibly confusing and so often under-utilized. If you find yourself realizing that your company is not currently tracking, gathering, or making use of the data that actually matters to your boss – or, you have the numbers and they are terrifying, be prepared to present a solution to your boss. Schedule in some time for a few quick calls to outside agencies for a consult. In the very least, you will leave the conversation with valuable information, such as strategy ideas moving forward. Now, get off of that job website and schedule a consult before your next presentation.