Many businesses fail to measure the metrics that accompany their digital marketing campaigns. This is a big mistake, as these metrics tell you what you’re doing well, what you need to improve upon, and where you should be investing your budget.
Not sure how to measure your results? You can use web and marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot Analytics, KISSmetrics and Clicky.
Here are 5 important marketing metrics that your business should be measuring:
Overall Website Traffic
Measuring your overall website traffic will give you the total figure of how many people have visited your site. Although it might seem pointless to track the total number rather than segments, it’s actually the best way to determine the effectiveness of your traffic generation campaigns. What results should you look for? Well, your website traffic should grow steadily – if you notice a sudden increase or drop, it indicates that something has changed, and that you should review your campaign.
Traffic from Different Sources
There are 4 primary sources of website traffic:
- Direct visitors – those who visit your site by entering your URL into their browser
- Search visitors – those who visit your site based on a search engine query
- Referral visitors – those who visit based on another site or blog
- Social visitors – those who visit via your social media networks
Your sources will have different levels of conversion. It’s important to know which sources contribute most to your traffic, as well as those that take up your budget without achieving results, so that you can adjust your campaigns accordingly. If things are going well, traffic from all sources should steadily improve over time.
Conversion Rates
Traditionally, a ‘conversion’ is when someone goes from being a website visitor to a paying customer. These days, a conversion is used to describe the moment customers complete any desired action on your website or social media profiles, e.g. downloading an ebook, filling out a form, clicking a particular button, creating an account or contacting your business.
In terms of tracking conversions, you should take into consideration:
- The overall conversion rates
- The source of your conversions (social, SEO, email, etc.)
- The first point of contact your customers use – for example they may first encounter your business through SEO but end up converting through social
- The cost of your conversions – so that you can weigh up whether spending your budget is worth it
Low conversion rates indicate poor design, unappealing offerings or disinterested audiences. Tracking your conversion rates can help you to identify what works and what doesn’t, and can inform the direction of your UX and site design. If you have poor conversion rates, it could be time to update your sales funnel or refresh your website.
Growth in Email Database
If you use email marketing (which you should), you need to keep track on your email database growth and loss. The aim is to grow the list so that you can extend your reach, expand your growth and position yourself as an industry leader. Email lists naturally decay by about 22.5% every year – this means it is really important that you pay attention to the quality of your emails and growing your database.
Losing subscribers? It could be due to the content or frequency of your emails. Make sure you’re not spamming your customers!
Overall ROI
This is often the final and most important metric for any marketing campaign, as it tells you point blank whether your marketing efforts have been worth it. Ideally, your ROI should be a positive figure (and as high as possible). If it’s negative, you’re losing money. To calculate a simple ROI percentage, divide your profit by what you spent, then multiply this figure by 100 to get the percentage.
Hire an Expert to Measure Your Results
Don’t have time to thoroughly measure and interpret the data from your campaigns? Hiring an experienced digital marketing agency to do it for you can be a wise choice. At Studio Culture, we provide Brisbane SEO, social media, email marketing, retargeting and more. Metrics are essential to the success of our efforts, and we regularly provide our clients with detailed analytics reports.
