How Outcome-Based Marketing Grows Businesses

Whether or not an ad campaign “worked” is a question sales and marketing teams have wrestled with since print was the only mass media. In a digital age with more channels, more targeting and customer behavior tracking, this question is somehow just as difficult—if not more—to answer.

“A lot of other agencies are focused on great creative or the newest technology but not focused on what the client’s actual end goals are,” says Leadline Chief Operating Officer Sarah Jordan. “You might get a lot of click-throughs, a wide reach or a higher number of impressions, but are they converting? Are these things moving the needle for your company?”

Outcome-based marketing zeroes in on business efficacy by starting with a client’s desired end state—usually a big-picture, revenue-focused goal—and problem-solving backward to build a strategy and success metrics around achieving that goal.

A question that we often ask clients to help identify outcomes is, “If you could wave a magic wand to help you achieve your business objective, what would you change?” While this doesn’t always lead right to the answer, it frames the conversation.

Marketing, Sales + Customer Journeys

Before we define outcomes, we must first clarify some sales and marketing basics.  

To be truly effective, sales and marketing must work in tandem throughout the entire customer journey, not “handing off” leads or working separately from (or even in competition with) each other.

In addition to collaborating throughout the entire customer journey, sales and marketing teams must have access to accurate data. 

To track and evaluate customer touchpoints—and subsequently identify revenue-building outcomes—a business must have: 

• An online presence through their website and social media
• A customer relationship management system
• A decent picture of their current customer journey

These three pillars are essential because the strongest outcomes often stem from addressing sticking points in the customer journey or the post-conversion nurturing cycle. 

Businesses struggling with any of the above three can consider implementing them as their most urgent outcomes and should engage a partner like Leadline to get them there.

Defining Marketing Outcomes, Tactics and Business Objectives

Assuming a business has the above three pillars in place (or in progress), what IS a marketing outcome, and how does it relate to a business objective?

A marketing outcome is a short-term development that helps increase revenue or lower costs—i.e., improves the business’s bottom line. For example: more quality leads for the same or less investment, a longer customer lifecycle, a cost-effective recruitment campaign, or a monthly increase in specific product or service sales. A marketing tactic is the action or medium deployed to achieve the outcome—i.e., an advertising campaign, web redesign, blog series, etc.

A business objective is a specific, measurable target designed to achieve a long-term goal. For example, increasing revenue by X% over the next 18 months, expanding market dominance in a specific region, or outpacing a particular competitor for a product or service.

Business objectives dictate marketing outcomes and, together with return on investment, define the success of a marketing strategy or tactic.

How They All Work Together

Defining “marketing outcome” in very general terms is difficult—an outcome should be highly specific to each business. This is why Leadline presents its work with clients as business problem-solving.

“We’re selling our clients solutions for their unique business challenges, not just a good-looking website,” Jordan says. “We are not selling a service. We are offering a business solution.”

For context, here’s a high-level overview of how some generic objectives, tactics and outcomes work together:

Assign Value to Your Outcomes

To better determine your marketing return on investment (ROI), try to attach a dollar value to each outcome. How much is a lead worth to your company? What is the average subscription value to your business? Answering these questions not only paints a clearer picture of operational costs vs. revenue, it answers the question, “Was this [campaign, conference, website update, etc.] worth it?”

Leadline’s outcome-based marketing approach guarantees that we never recommend solutions without setting clear, realistic key performance indicators that will generate ROI within a given timeframe.

Conclusion

Outcome-based marketing is an exciting approach for its flexibility and paradigm shift—it puts marketing and sales together as business problem solvers, tackling what moves the needle for a client’s business.

However, optimizing an outcome-based approach takes time and expertise—a business needs knowledgeable people tracking their efforts consistently to gather the right data. 

An agency like Leadline is indispensable for launching outcome-based solutions without wasting your time and resources to keep your business going. Need help with this step? It’s what we do for our clients every day. Contact us, and we can get started on ROI-focused marketing plans and campaigns.

Welcome to the world of digital marketing, where every social media platform offers a unique stage for your brand to shine. With billions of users scrolling, tapping and engaging daily, there’s never been a better time to harness the power of social platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest to get better outcomes, from brand awareness to lead generation, for your brand.

Let’s Talk Social Media Platforms and How to Use Them

LinkedIn

Let’s start with LinkedIn—the professional’s playground boasting over 1 billion users. LinkedIn is the place to make meaningful connections and showcase your brand’s expertise. Dive into industry-specific groups, share thought-provoking articles, encourage employees to share their knowledge and position your brand as a leader in your industry. With targeted advertising options and robust analytics, LinkedIn is the perfect platform for B2B marketing, lead generation and to build strong brand awareness.

Instagram

With its 2 billion monthly active users, Instagram is where creativity meets community. From eye-catching visuals to engaging stories and video reels, Instagram offers opportunities to highlight your brand’s personality in creative and authentic ways. Posting on this platform enables you to build trust and hype up your brand, allowing your audience to be excited about upcoming product launches, and it further encourages them to make a purchase. There are so many strategic opportunities on Instagram; you can embrace influencer partnerships, leverage user-generated content or create content that humanizes your brand or business to connect with potential customers authentically.

Facebook

Facebook is a powerhouse for social media, with over 3 billion active monthly users, and paved the way for many of the current social platforms to succeed in today’s marketing landscape. While Facebook has changed over the last few years, it is still considered one of the best platforms to run advertisements on with substantial opportunities for brands to reach their target audience and achieve their marketing goals. If you’re considering running targeted ad campaigns, Facebook is a must-have platform in any brand’s paid social media strategy.

YouTube

YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, with over 2.5 billion users logged in monthly. This platform can technically be considered the original over-the-top (OTT) platform but is now considered a social channel with components like user-generated content, engagements and networking. Whether you’re creating tutorials, product demos, short videos, long videos or behind-the-scenes content, YouTube is a platform to consider posting on to encourage engagement and increase brand awareness by showcasing video content your audience wants to see about your company, brand and products. With advanced analytics and advertising options, businesses can track performance metrics, reach new audiences, drive traffic to their website or landing pages, and appear organically in search results when videos are optimized for keywords.

TikTok

With over 1 billion monthly active users, TikTok offers businesses unparalleled organic reach and authentic engagement opportunities. TikTok’s diverse user base includes professionals and active consumers across all industries. Businesses that leverage TikTok’s algorithm-driven “For You” page can build a significant following and brand loyalty on the platform. From consumer brands to B2B companies, TikTok provides a platform for storytelling, education and creativity, making it essential for businesses to harness its potential for success.

Pinterest

Pinterest, a visual discovery engine with over 500 million monthly active users, is where inspiration meets action. Create eye-catching pins, optimize your content for search and tap into Pinterest’s engaged user base to drive traffic. Making the most of this platform will ultimately lead to sales for your business or service. Whether showing products, sharing tips, creating downloadable assets or utilizing short-form videos, Pinterest is a platform to spark ideas and motivate your audience to take action.

Here’s the Wrap-Up

In conclusion, social media marketing offers endless possibilities for brands to connect with their audience, drive engagement and achieve their marketing objectives and business goals. By understanding each platform’s unique strengths and audience demographics, brands can tailor their strategies to maximize the impact of social media marketing. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to unlock your brand’s potential and see how the power of social media can help your business succeed.

No marketing effort exists just to exist—it’s always seeking to inspire a feeling and action in target audience members. Whether that action is visiting a website, subscribing to a newsletter or buying a product or service, marketing is the road sign leading customers there.

In evaluating whether a given marketing tactic or campaign works, it’s critical to know the difference between outcomes and results:

Results

Short-term reactions to a campaign or tactic

• social media clicks
• website or landing page visits
• email opens and click-through rates
• inquiry form submissions.

Outcomes

Specific results that affect the business’s bottom line, long-term

• sales increase on a promoted product or service
• creating a new touchpoint in the customer journey
• better-qualified leads that are easier to convert
• increase in repeat purchases

Outcomes in Practice

To apply outcome-based marketing to your business, customer relationship management software and basic web analytics are non-negotiable musts. You need to track customer behavior as accurately as possible to identify patterns and opportunities.

With the right measurement tools in place, we then ask, “What business outcome matters most to you, and why?”.

Once we have a specific, measurable outcome for a client, we build our marketing strategy, timelines and key performance indicators around what will achieve that outcome.

After our marketing solutions (website, SEO copy, social media campaign, etc.) are launched, Leadline closely monitors the right data points to see what is moving us toward our outcome. Anything that underperforms is pivoted ASAP, ensuring we generate immediate results and the desired outcome.

In today’s social media-driven world, influencer marketing has emerged as a major trend. Social media platforms can no longer be an afterthought for brands and businesses. They are now an essential component for effective marketing and business growth. Then, you bring in the individuals with significant followings who have become influential voices capable of shaping the opinions and even purchasing behaviors of their fans and followers. 

From Instagram to YouTube, TikTok and even LinkedIn, influencers have considerable power to endorse products, services and experiences to their audiences. Let’s look at influencer marketing in 2024 and strategies for effective execution.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing involves collaborating with individuals who have a dedicated and engaged following on various social media platforms to promote products, services or brands. These influencers can range from celebrities and prominent industry experts to micro-influencers with very niche audiences. The key lies in their ability to sway the purchasing decisions of their followers through authentic and relatable content.

Why Do Businesses and Brands Use Influencer Marketing?

The thing that makes influencer marketing so appealing is the ability to connect with consumers more organically and authentically. It’s the modern-day word of mouth, if you will. People trust recommendations from individuals they follow, admire and feel a connection with, making influencer endorsements a powerful tool for businesses and brands to get in front of very specific target audiences, drive sales and ultimately build credibility.

What Does Influencer Marketing Look Like? 

Product Endorsements: One of the most common influencer marketing tactics is product endorsement. Influencers seamlessly integrate sponsored products into their feeds to discuss the benefits while ultimately influencing their audiences to purchase.

Brand Awareness: Influencers can raise brand awareness by exposing their followers to new businesses, products or service experiences. Through sponsored posts and collaborations, influencers can talk about a brand, company, service or experience in an incredibly authentic way, which expands the visibility of that business. Sometimes, the influence is very obvious, and sometimes, it’s subtle reminders that pique the interest of followers. Then, they start researching for themselves and go seek out your brand.

Authentic Content: Influencers are skilled content creators who can produce high-quality, engaging content tailored to their audience’s preferences. Brands can enhance their overall brand image and feel authentic and relatable to their customers by leveraging content made by influencers (otherwise known as user-generated content or UGC) to populate their social media channels, website and marketing campaigns. UGC can be a form of social proof; it shows real-life experiences with your business that users can connect with. There is a cost associated with UGC, but it can be significantly lower than traditional endorsements and often has significant organic reach compared to ads. This means you can maximize your marketing efforts, stay cost-effective and ultimately get a better ROI.

Have We Influenced You Yet? Now, Here Are the Things to Consider Before You Launch an Influencer Campaign

Clearly Define Your Objectives: Before you get too excited and dash straight into the world of influencer marketing campaigns, you need to clearly outline your goals and objectives. Whether it’s increasing sales, boosting brand awareness or launching a new product, having a clear direction will guide your strategy, inform who to partner with and help define clear measurement metrics.

Identify the Right Influencers: You want to choose influencers whose content, aesthetics and audience demographics align with your brand. Micro-influencers often offer higher engagement rates and super niche audiences, while macro-influencers provide broader reach but may come with a higher price tag per post. There are also dedicated influencers who specialize in specific content that can be a good fit depending on your service offering and niche.

Build Relationships: Authenticity is the secret sauce in influencer marketing. Make sure you give space to influencers to create genuine content that resonates with their audience while incorporating your brand message organically, and you’ll see better results from your campaign. Building lasting relationships with influencers can lead to more authentic endorsements and better long-term outcomes for your business.

Measure and Analyze Performance: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagement rate, reach and conversion metrics to evaluate the success of your influencer campaigns. You can gain insights into what resonated with the audience and which influencers made the biggest impact. These insights will help you refine your strategy for the next campaign. 

A quick side note: stay compliant. There are some rules and regulations around ads, even in influencer ads, like disclosing sponsored content and following platform policies. It just makes sense and keeps your efforts safe.

Here’s the Wrap-Up

Influencer marketing isn’t just a trend; it’s a strategic move for brands and businesses who want to captivate their target audiences authentically and effectively.

Influencer marketing fosters genuine connections between brands and consumers in an ever-evolving digital space. Through carefully curated content and strategic collaborations, influencers can breathe life into brands, driving sales and, when done correctly, fostering long-term loyalty and credibility.

So, as you dip your marketing toes into influencer marketing, remember not to overthink or over-direct the campaign, but instead focus on clear outcomes. Know what results you want to see, embrace authenticity and don’t be afraid to learn and adapt based on performance metrics. In the end, influencer marketing isn’t just about making a fast and brief impression—it’s about creating a lasting one, finding customers who will buy from you repeatedly and getting your desired outcomes.