What is your definition of online success? Are you looking for rankings, traffic, downloads, sales, all of the above, or something else? Maybe you haven’t really thought about it, or maybe you never really thought you had to think about it because, you know, we all know what successful web marketing means, right? Or do we?
In sports, the rules are clear and the goals are well defined. Get the ball through the hoop, bring runners home, or score a touchdown to put points on the board. If there is a violation, the refs call it and penalties are handed out. Web marketing doesn’t have a rule book and any penalties assigned are inconsistent at best.
The closest thing web marketers have to a rule book are “best practices,” which can vary depending on who’s saying them and what studies are being cited. And the goals? Those are often fluid, depending on the business and what site visitors want.
The real problem is that what you may consider a success may not be all that apparent to the people doing your marketing. They may be looking at entirely different metrics altogether. And the same can be applied in reverse: What they think is a clear indicator of success isn’t necessarily what you’re looking for.
Which means, success for your web marketing campaign has to be defined. In advance.
You might be surprised by how many people don’t do this. We all think that what is obvious to us is obvious to everyone, but it’s not. In fact, many times what is obvious is all wrong, but no one knows it because they have not been educated.
And that means if you want a successful web marketing campaign, you and your marketing team need to have a conversation about what success means.
Everybody needs to be on board with what your web marketing goals are and what metrics you’ll be using to measure those goals. It does no good to point out how much engagement you’re getting on social media if that’s not what you’re most interested in. By establishing your definitions and metrics for success, you can make sure that everyone is on board and everything being done is working toward achieving those goals.