When Marketing Leaders Can’t Explain Search Performance via @sejournal, @coreydmorris
Search marketing produces an enormous amount of performance data, but many marketing leaders still struggle to explain what those results mean for the business.
SEO and paid search reports often focus on visibility, clicks, and conversion metrics. And, in many cases, data sources for that information don’t match up, as I explored in my previous column.
While valuable, these metrics don’t always translate clearly into business impact and leave chief marketing officers and marketing leaders with reports they can present, but not always confidently explain. And, in some cases, get caught looking defensive and reactionary versus confident and proactive in presenting performance data and having the pulse of what is happening.
I learned this the hard way early in my career as an SEO. A few months into SEO work with an attorney, I had rankings, traffic, and tracked conversions that all looked great. My stomach dropped when I was told, “that’s great Corey, but I didn’t get a single new case from any of this.” It wasn’t comfortable for me back then to go beyond the marketing key performance indicators. As I grew in my career, though, I never forgot about that day.
Today’s attribution world is a mess, and it is more complex when we add in AI visibility, sources, and even Google’s own SERP changes with AI integration to our SEO and SEM data.
This article explores the gap that exists between search marketing performance metrics and executive-level business outcomes, and offers guidance for how marketing leaders can translate search results into meaningful business narratives.
1. Start With The Business Outcome, Not The Metric
The deepest business metric (not marketing) that you have access to is where I recommend starting. There’s not a universal truth on what the ultimate business metric is due to the complexity of different organizations and how much access there is to data, so this is possibly wildly different for everyone.
The goal is to try to remove a CEO vs. CMO disconnect. Or, one between marketing leadership and other leadership functions in a business. It is clear that when marketing leadership is engaged at a business leadership level (not just marketing channels), companies grow faster.
Whether it is actual revenue, customer lifetime value, or something further upstream like qualified leads (and however complex that scoring might be), going beyond the basic web conversion data point can be incredibly helpful in marketing leadership.
When you have the ability to map out business outcome metrics working backward to search metrics, you can demonstrate the impact of the work in a way that shows value versus showing activity.
As a marketing leader, this might seem overly personal, but you can often look at what metrics your role’s performance is accountable for and start there to ensure you have a clear view of search’s impact on those KPIs.
Whether you’re new to your marketing leadership role, or just need to level-set with peers or other executives you report to, a structured goal-setting process can be powerful. You can do so by gaining one-on-one perspectives on what metrics matter to each person. However, it can be really powerful to do this in a workshop format. One where the pressure of past results is off. Most importantly, fostering conversation and Q&A where every person in the room answers questions around what metrics matter to them personally, their functional area, and to the company. This process can help everyone recognize how aligned they are or how far off, which helps you to set a baseline for things that might not be in the purview of marketing, but still have a profound impact on performance measurement.
2. Focus On Fewer, More Meaningful Metrics
When we have too many metrics in our performance data, we can dilute the message we’re trying to convey in reporting. I have sat through presentations that include slide after slide of numbers to only see an executive from another function of the business derail the presentation with impatience, wanting to know what the key takeaway is.
“Is this working?”
“What is the ROI?”
Or, “why are we not showing up for [insert keyword]?” when there’s numbers and KPIs overload.
Not every metric needs to be included in performance reporting, and when you can prioritize what leadership peers or higher-ups actually care about, then you can zero in on it.
These can be uncomfortable questions, challenges, or confrontations in reporting meetings. It can be incredibly helpful for CMOs/marketing leaders to partner with CFOs/financial counterparts to create a shared measurement framework to reduce guessing and to define a shorter, more meaningful set of metrics.
If there isn’t already some type of executive scorecard or overall business reporting format that you contribute to, you might find success in taking a first step in proposing the creation of one. Working one-on-one with a finance counterpart is a great start–as noted. Often, there isn’t an owner or accountable party for unifying all of the metrics. There is likely a source of truth, like a customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning, that matches up down the road with financial reports. Getting buy-in and help on a personal level from other leaders can help make subjective sets of data that different people look at come together in common metrics and shared success language.
3. Explain What Changed And Why
I personally don’t like to use the term “reporting” when looking at performance. I’ve written before about the START Planning Process, where the “R” in that process is intentionally for “review” and not “reporting.”
You can argue with me that this is just semantics (and, since I’m an SEO at heart, I’ll accept a healthy debate), but I feel it is important for there to be balance in any level of performance analysis. Reporting, in my mind, is looking at what happened and into the past. Review has some “reporting” but also covers the here and now and looks forward. It is confident and in control.
We’re not just sharing what happened, but we’re owning and answering for what changes happened, what caused them, and using real campaign examples, competition, algorithm/platform changes, and talking about it connected with broader business implications and not just deep in search silos.
Leaving data up to interpretation can lead to a wide range of assumptions, and the data should not be left to speak for itself regarding what happened and why.
You don’t have to abandon slides or totally change your reporting format. However, you can change the order and only show the slides and metrics that tell a meaningful story and push deeper drill-down metrics that might be a distraction to hidden slides, linked reports, and things that you can have handy if needed, but that don’t create default distraction opportunities.
4. Connect Performance To Strategy
Performance data, no matter how real-time the dashboard is, how confident and positive the presentation or conversation might be, is typically delivered at a moment in time.
We all have short memories. If we’re in marketing leadership and close to the work within the team, we’re focused on the details of what we’re doing in the moment. For broader leadership outside of marketing, they are buried in their own day-to-day, and all of us likely don’t have our marketing strategy memorized.
Analytics should serve decision-making, and not simply be for a presentation. Framing data points in a decision-driven approach will shift the conversation and empower you in where you’re going with the digital strategy.
Having a documented, detailed, accountable, and actionable strategy and plan is critical. The next most critical thing is being able to connect what happened, where we are now, and where we’re going directly back to that strategy that was agreed upon in the past, as it is the objective source of truth to keep from chasing distractions or having debates about details that aren’t fully connected to the business outcomes we’re working toward with intention.
Marketing strategies and plans are often dozens of pages long in document format or sets of slides. They are rarely pulled up and walked through after the initial sign-off on the strategy. Bringing the strategy deck to every performance review meeting isn’t advised. However, having parts of it handy is important. It is easy to get lost on tangents about “what ifs” and disconnected tactics. With performance anchored to specific strategic initiatives, you can keep the strategy in front of stakeholders in context with performance data, so there are clear and objective details to stop tangents before they happen. Practically, this can be a strategic aspect of the plan right next to the KPI in a slide or in a dashboard to reduce the risk of data points being taken out of context.
5. Provide A Clear Point Of View
I would love to live in a world where search marketing and business numbers speak for themselves, and I could simply stand behind them. That world doesn’t exist, though, (I’ve learned the hard way), and if we don’t have a point of view to share on performance, rooted in the truths of our strategies and tactics, then we’re creating a vacuum for someone else to apply their own interpretations.
For a number of reasons, CMOs can “suffer from a crisis of confidence” and not fully own areas where they have a unique impact in the C-suite and beyond.
When it comes to digital marketing, we have to be confident about what is working, what isn’t working, and what needs to change. This is where we show up as leaders to own the subject matter. While we might need the approval of others, need their cooperation, or need to reach certain milestones, we want to avoid situations that put us in reporting mode, getting defensive, losing the message, and taking away from where we’re going.
Search marketing changes fast. I don’t have to tell you that. If you’re struggling with potentially coming across as defensive or if legit changes in the search industry risk sounding like excuses, I recommend developing your own POV on search. My team’s is 11 pages and is updated quarterly. It helps provide philosophical information about what we do in search, why, and references the third-party sources that go beyond our own experience to justify our strategies and tactics. This type of documentation can be helpful to offer to stakeholders for reading outside of performance reviews and to help extract things from inside your team’s heads out into the open that can be stood behind, challenged, or referenced to make things more objective and less personal when questions come.
6. Define What Happens Next
Whether in an informal conversation, a formal presentation deck, or providing context to a dashboard, you could have already addressed how the strategy is woven into the performance metrics and where we’re going next.
Being consistent in keeping everyone focused on the forward momentum (or corrections) of a plan incrementally in reporting or in conclusion, you don’t want to understate what is happening next.
Outlining next steps, priorities, adjustments, resources needed, and any strategic adjustments puts the focus on where you’re going, what you need to accomplish, and what to expect in the next review setting, especially if you tend to have your review (or reporting) derailed consistently by other stakeholders. This isn’t about closing the loop on what happened, but about closing the next loop and setting up the next review for meaningful impact, as MIT Sloan notes regarding how analytics success isn’t found in just data collection, but in proactive data management and insight.
Paid search benefits from being able to make quicker updates that effect change. But, both paid search and SEO can benefit from tangible action plans. While they are ongoing disciplines, treating short-term tasks like smaller projects or agile sprints can help connect activity to results. Crafting a brief, project plan, or documented sprint can go a long way in helping demonstrate the short-term activities that are planned, so there’s no wondering about what mystic or magical tactics are going to happen to ensure the conversation and review have progressed at the next interval for those who aren’t in the details with you.
Final Thought
In marketing leadership, it is on us to own our metrics and performance. That means going beyond the basics of simply reporting on the search marketing KPIs to stakeholders. It means demonstrating leadership in connecting the dots between search performance and business performance outcomes.
This is territory that, early in my career, I struggled with. How could I answer for things that happen beyond the conversation? Well, I had to learn through both wins and losses to understand it and grow comfortable with it.
Owning and leading in marketing, for search performance, means having the POV, connecting back to objective strategy anchors, and having a “review” mindset balanced with what happened, where we are, and where we’re going, and not getting stuck reporting the past or letting others control the narrative or come up with separate opinions that differ from the truth.
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