Mark Miller — June 7, 2017 
One major trend we’ve watched in recent years as a marketing talent agency is that more pressure is on marketers than ever to drive results and prove their value. If you’re taking on a new marketing position, it’s especially important to make a good impression early on and establish a reputation as a difference maker and indispensable resource.
But even in a best-case scenario where you step into a new role and start producing results, it’s not always easy to prove it and make your results known. Today’s world of real-time responsiveness and instant analytics has trained us to expect instant gratification in the form of demonstrable success. But the reality is that some aspects of marketing are long-term efforts that can require weeks, months, or even more to fully pay off. And sometimes you’re limited by the nature of your business cycle–if your business only has a handful of large sales per year, it’s hard to guarantee immediate, visible results.
Marketers know better than most the importance of first impressions. Making a mark early on in a new job will establish a foundation for more respect, authority, and growth potential during your time at that business.
How can you show to your coworkers and supervisors that you’re driving results early on after being put in a new job through a marketing placement agency? Try these strategies to demonstrate the impact you’re making right away and give them an idea of what to expect from you in the future:
Aim for Some Easy Wins Early
Many of the most productive and ROI-generating marketing strategies are effectively never-ending campaigns that may take a long time to accumulate meaningful results and analytics. But there are also some tactics that can be effectively compartmentalized and completed as demonstrably finished accomplishments.
For instance; imagine you were put in charge of a business’s SEO strategy by a marketing talent agency. It might well take months for you to start ranking high on some competitive keywords and generating traffic that leads to sales. But there are meaningful things you can do in the meantime that are highly visible, tangible achievements, like reducing site load times, making a site mobile-friendly, or redesigning navigation for better UX.
Seek out opportunities to fix obvious problems and create assets that will have lasting, readily apparent benefits. Some examples:
- Complete a competitive analysis of your marketplace and identify opportunities for growth
- Identify blatantly broken processes or tools and update them to modern best practices
- Focus on your “place of strength” where the majority of your experience and skills lie and work from there
Become the Office Clairvoyant
Go out of your way to stay on top of the latest trends in your field and anticipate how they’ll affect your business’s industry and customers. Predict the future and forecast coming changes (and then do what’s needed to make sure you can jump on any opportunities or dodge incoming problems).
Make your prophesies with discretion. You don’t want to develop a reputation for “crying wolf” and making predictions that don’t come true. But if you do begin making forecasts that consistently come true, you’ll become a seer in the eyes of your peers and managers.
Point to Powerful Metrics
Today’s sophisticated analytics systems offer marketers a buffet of different reports and KPIs to track. But at the end of the day, ROI will always be the king of all metrics for marketing professionals–that’s one thing we as a marketing placement agency don’t expect will ever change.
Unfortunately, ROI can be hard to nail down–especially early in your tenure at a new marketing position. When you don’t have hard data proving significant immediate returns, turn to other related stats that can at least be tied to it in the short term. How are you increasing leads, or trimming down cost-per-customer? The answer will depend on your position in the organization. For instance:
- Increased traffic, longer time-on-site, and lower bounce rate for the company’s web site
- Cutting down on cost-per-click in your Facebook Advertising
- Improvements in direct mail response rates
- Increases in engagement on social media
Additionally, make sure to measure your “starting point” when you first join so you’re best empowered to point to progress as time goes by.
Translate Data Into Insights–and Add a Creative Element
Just because that endless spreadsheet is a goldmine of data for you doesn’t mean others will see anything other than a block of numbers. When reporting, tease out the most important data and convert it into information useful even to those without the same background and experience you have. Compare your performance to the company’s previous results, industry benchmarks, and your eventual goals.
Don’t stop there. Find ways to illustrate your progress over time. Side-by-side comparisons, timelines, charts, checklists and more make compelling ways to add context and make your accomplishments more meaningful. Be consistent and use a standard, flexible reporting template that’s reliable and user-friendly.
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