Return on Investment of Identity Maintenance

Activities such as website redesigns, brand refreshes, brand messaging updates, brand collateral or website updates, culture videos, etc.

If you spend a significant portion of your budget on identity maintenance (think a website redesign, brand refresh, etc.), you want to know if it paid off.

The simplest way to track return from identity maintenance is to look at your bottom line. For example, if a year after updating your brand messaging across all of your marketing content, your revenue is up 10%, it is reasonable to infer that the update played a role in that increase, assuming there weren’t other major changes elsewhere in the business. It can be hard to have a granular breakdown for identity maintenance activities; these projects are often implemented across the whole company and not attributable to one specific channel. A large change like updating your brand messaging affects every level of your marketing funnel—from the homepage hero new prospects see the first time they visit your website to the language in a pitch deck that helps you close a deal. In addition to improvements to your bottom line, here are a few signals to watch for:

Website lead generation:

For website redesigns specifically, an increase in qualified leads originating from organic website traffic is a sign that your improvements are working. If you generated 2 leads from your website the year before your new site was launched and 12 leads the year after, intuition says that the new site is attracting more of the right type of people. Paying close attention to attribution data and doing further analysis to test if the increase is statistically significant can increase your certainty about whether or not your new website is working. If you are attracting more qualified leads but few are closing, that’s a sign you might need to focus your attention elsewhere in the sales process. If you have seen an increase in traffic and conversions but not from qualified leads, it is worth tightening up the content of your website to better fit your target audience.

An increase in your win rate:

Identity maintenance can also affect your conversion rate and ultimately your win rate. If you take time to add calls to action, improve your landing pages, and update your sales material, you should see your close rate increase. Doing this will make all of your other marketing activities—brand awareness, lead generation, and audience engagement—more profitable. Don’t excel at the top and middle of the marketing funnel, then fumble on the one yard line. Make sure your marketing is helping you convert and close deals, then track your success.

Faster “aha” moments:

Any salesperson can recognize the moment the value of their company's offering “clicks” in the mind of a prospect. It is the turning point in which a potential buyer goes from trying to understand the product or service being sold to being able to conceptualize and desire its impact on their business or life. This “aha moment” doesn’t guarantee a sale, but it's a sign that the sales and marketing communications have been effective; the prospect understands the offer and is able to fully weigh their decision.

A clearer brand identity means that your offering will click with your audience faster than before. This signal isn’t necessarily one that you can observe with an analytics tool. Have your sales team pay close attention to prospects during sales calls to notice when the “aha” moment happens. If your brand identity is clear enough, it may even happen before the first call. Also make note of the verbal or written feedback you get from prospects or customers. It should be clear when your brand and offering are more understandable and memorable. If this is happening across the board, it’s a sign that your work is paying off.

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