When you are tinkering, you need many measuring tools. But that is when you are tinkering. In business, when it comes to Inbound Marketing, things are different. First, we are not here to tinker but to win new customers. So, if it seems to you that your Inbound toolbox is overflowing with too many measurement tools (KPIs or Key Performance Indicators) that are time-consuming to handle, it is time to switch to a comprehensive marketing automation solution to professionalize your activity.
When it comes to inbound as well as digital strategy, there is no good action without good measurement. However, when you are forced to navigate between several tools to gather the different KPIs related to the activity, the least that can be said is that good intentions turn into a… road to Calvary. As a result, coordination between marketing and sales teams takes a serious hit, to the great peril of the Inbound strategy itself !
Breaking out of the (illogical !) mindset: 1 KPI = 1 tool !
Because while obtaining the right information, or KPIs, is essential, you still need to be able to get it easily and in real time in order to act immediately—in other words, to obtain the right information, at the right time, for each target, so you can act in rhythm. This is where things get complicated.
Taking just the example of using social networks, which are necessary for strong Inbound strategy performance since they act as a real sounding board for content, you need to monitor your results and know what your competitors are doing on a very regular basis (monitoring, e-reputation, click-through rate, engagement rate, number of impressions, etc.), all the more so if you have a social selling policy.
What happens if, to do this, you have to refer to as many different tools as there are indicators (KPIs)? The result is simple and unequivocal : you lose time and responsiveness ; in other words, two parameters that harm your Inbound performance. Even worse, in the heat of the moment, you may simply not check the results for lack of time… Yet in marketing, as elsewhere, what is not measured does not exist.
A lack of responsiveness that will penalize the entire Inbound chain… First marketing, which will not know how to act and / or react to competitors’ actions, or support certain actions already underway… Then sales, who, engaged in social selling actions, will not have the necessary information to act with their communities.
Comprehensive marketing automation solution : the true Swiss Army knife !
To remedy this, there is a true Swiss Army knife that should be made available to marketers and to those who directly implement the Inbound strategy, namely the sales team : a comprehensive marketing automation solution (synchronized with a CRM).
Such a solution makes it possible to aggregate the main indicators, including information from social media. This all-in-one tool makes it possible to monitor the main indicators via a single dashboard that is easier to consult quickly than a handful of disparate tools. Through such a dashboard, it becomes easy to track the progress of prospects in their buying journey in order to be responsive and gain efficiency (the toolbox is lighter to use) and, ultimately, achieve better profitability from the actions carried out.
Indeed, the perfect responsiveness enabled by a complete platform bringing together the main KPIs makes it possible to pass qualified, mature leads to salespeople in real time. An essential parameter, because according to studies* 35 to 50% of sales go to the first caller. Further proof that today it is mandatory to stop tinkering !
