Whether you’re overwhelmed with data or simply don’t know where to start, understanding the primary metrics that impact your business and building consistent reporting around those metrics should be the foundation for making meaningful, data-driven decisions for any organization. With all the changes in 2020 that have occurred, keeping your franchise development marketing focused and active is just as important today as it has ever been—especially when we see the data shift. Whether you are seeing changes in lead volume or qualified leads, you need to know why your results are changing and how your marketing partners can optimize your campaigns to improve your performance. Utilizing a holistic marketing dashboard is an efficient way to organize those changes in a digestible, easy-to-read manner, keeping you up to date and creating reporting that fits your needs.
According to Forbes, “Using big data and analytics has always been on a steady growth trajectory, and then COVID-19 exploded and made the need for data even greater.” At Hot Dish Advertising, we have used this year to revamp our reporting technology to meet the needs of our client partners, which has allowed us to become more efficient at providing insights and recommendations.
Reporting and strategic analysis is a vital part of the work we do and should be included in the marketing planning process as well. It’s our job to make sure our franchise partners are up to date with the performance of their campaigns, identifying the whats, the whys and the actions that need to occur as next steps to increase or change results.
5 Questions to Ask Your Franchise Development Marketing Partner
When you are on information overload or don’t even know what’s accessible, take a step back, a deep breath and start by thinking about the questions you should ask about your marketing initiatives. According to Natalie Wendel, Director of Digital for Hot Dish Advertising,
“When I’m assessing performance for a month, I broadly want to know how lead volume changes, if we got more efficient, what our top-performing tactics were and if there are any noticeable trends in the results. I also want to know why these results happened.”
For someone who is not in the weeds, these questions are a great place to start.
- Do you know how many leads were received last month?
- Do you know how qualified they were?
- How much did you spend per lead?
- Can you tell the source of those leads?
- Can you see all that information in one place?
If you can’t easily answer those questions through the data presented in your current reporting, it’s time to look for a more dynamic solution that fits your needs. With our reporting tools, we are able to combine website analytics and important data from your CRM to give you a reporting solution that meets your needs.
Let’s be honest, there is no silver bullet when it comes to marketing tactics, and we believe in a multi-touchpoint approach to franchise marketing. This means having a wide variety of marketing tactics in the mix and measuring how those tactics impact results independently and holistically. It is not easy to measure this, especially from a qualified lead standpoint, but this is what is needed to make strategic decisions in media placement. Because of this variety, it is important to be able to synthesize data and results in a way that gives us actionable insights for the future.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach; every company is different with differing goals, objectives and reporting needs. What works for you, may not work for another company. Find a way to work with your marketing partners to not only understand the reports provided, but also ensure that they are tailored to answer the questions you should be asking every month. Meaningful reporting is important; it’s not just reporting on the data, but it should also explain why results changed. Those insights are the roadmap to future changes that will increase efficiency to help you meet your goals.
Contact our team to learn how we can make meaningful reporting work for you to help meet your goals.
Written by: Tanner Jurek, Digital Strategist, Hot Dish Advertising
