What’s your definition of success?

If you’re one of our (smokin’ hot) clients, you’ve undoubtedly heard one of us ask you something that sounded a lot of like this: "How will you measure the success of this campaign?” or "How will you determine if this project was effective or not?”

In marketing, defining success is a critical component to any campaign. And while it’s easy to ask the question, coming up with an answer can often feel like convincing a posse of teenagers to give up their cell phones for a day. (Translation – it’s hard. Real hard!)

To help you through this process, we’ve put together a list of many different ways you can measure success. In fact we came up with 50 of them! Here we go:

1. Increase in unique visitors to your website or campaign landing page.
2. Increase in page views on your website.
3. Number of click-throughs to the product you’re promoting.
4. Percentage increase in product sales.
5. Increase in requests for an info kit, sales kit or product brochure.
6. Number of phones calls to your service lines (or phone line established for specific campaign).
7. Number of direct sales leads as a result of the campaign.
8. Change in search engine rankings for your brand’s website.
9. Number of new vs. returning visitors to your website.
10. Increase in visitor loyalty to your website.
11. Number of click-throughs from sponsored search campaigns.
12. Conversions from online campaigns.
13. Number of people who subscribe to your blog RSS feed.
14. Number of comments on a blog post.
15. Number of interactions (positive or negative) on your social media platforms.
16. Number of people who have liked your business’ Facebook fan page.
17. Number of people "talking about this” on your Facebook page.
18. Number of engaged Facebook users.
19. The number of unique people who have seen your Facebook post virally.
20. Number of check-ins via Facebook or Foursquare.
21. Number of Twitter followers.
22. Number of favorited Twitter posts.
23. Number of retweets or Twitter replies.
24. Number of newspaper articles generated in response to a PR campaign.
25. Number of times your brand was mentioned in a media article, on Facebook or on Twitter.
26. Number of times your staff is contacted for a PR interview request.
27. Number of YouTube channel views.
28. Number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.
29. Number of YouTube video views.
30. Number of inbound links to your website or specific campaign landing page.
31. Number of new subscribers, such as email newsletter subscribers.
32. Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social marketing programs.
33. Time spent on your website or campaign landing page.
34. Percentage of traffic generated (unique clicks) from paid media.
35. Percentage of traffic generated from earned media (PR efforts).
36. Number of entries into a contest.
37. Number of free whitepapers or case studies downloaded.
38. Number of customers/prospects assisted by customer service team.
39. Redemption rate for a coupon or special discount.
40. Number of product reviews left on your website.
41. Rate of customers/visitor retention.
42. Change in market share.
43. Number of click through on your email newsletter.
44. Attendance generated at in-person events like a tradeshow or open house.
45. Email newsletter delivery rate.
46. Decrease in email newsletter’s bounce rate.
47. Increase in number of email newsletter shares or forwards.
48. Percentage of revenue per email newsletter sent.
49. Positive comments and feedback from customers.
50. Increase in customer satisfaction levels through customer research.

So next time you’re about to embark on a new marketing adventure, ask yourself "how will I measure success?”

Inga Rundquist

Inga Rundquist is a Public Relations Arsonist and Co-Owner at MindFire. When she’s not dreaming up ideas that will generate publicity, you can find her knee deep in the social media world, also known as the next PR frontier.