The endgame of digital marketing is to increase profits, but not every digital marketing campaign directly leads to getting you dollars. Some campaigns bring more visitors to the blog, while others simply raise awareness of your brand – in the long run, both help to increase profits. But, what about the short-term results? The bottom line is that every marketer needs to track the success of their digital marketing campaigns both in the long and short term.
Measuring the efficiency of digital marketing campaigns is a vital part of an efficient, exciting and engaging marketing strategy. But many times marketers struggle to understand the exact results of their campaigns. Which marketing channels consistently produces the best ROI (return on investment)? Will change in budget allocation earn you more revenues? Well unless you know which metrics to track, you can only make guesses.
According to a survey conducted by Adobe Systems and Research Now, “Only 29% of the respondents believe they are doing the process of measuring marketing performance well.”
In this article, we would take you through the most important metrics which measure and track the performance of your digital marketing campaigns most accurately.
So, what to track?
There are a variety of metrics which can help you fine-tune your campaign performance. The broad categories which you must measure are Traffic metrics, Conversion metrics, and Social metrics and Revenue metrics. Check out some good metrics to capture in each category before you get you started:
- Traffic metrics
Traffic is the most fundamental metric you should be tracking. Higher the traffic on your site means more likely is the chance of converting some of them into customers. Here are some key metrics for this category:
- Overall Site Traffic – This is the baseline information of all visits to your site or landing page. It is one of the most important metrics as it gives a big-picture look at overall traffic over a period of time. Significant changes in traffic flow to your website give understandings on how effective or ineffective a particular digital marketing effort is. Also, note when measuring site traffic rather than focusing on page views only also see how many unique visitors your website gets per week or per month. Increasing number of unique visitors indicates greater chances of getting potential customers.
- Traffic Sources – This metric digs down a bit more deeply into your overall traffic metric. It helps to determine from which sources web visitors are coming, this further helps to pin point where you need to focus your future marketing efforts. In general, this metric helps you break down your overall traffic into the following four channels/sources:
- Direct Visitors – ones who come to your site by typing your URL into their web browser.
- Organic/Search – ones who arrive at your site based on a search query.
- Referrals – ones who arrived at your side from a reference link on another website or blog.
- Social Media – visitors who arrive at your site from your social media platforms.
Knowing where your site traffic is coming from and which keywords brought them can give you a vision on what keywords or keyword phrases you should apply more on your digital marketing campaigns.
- Mobile Traffic – Today mobile internet is one strong digital marketing showground, this is because more and more people access the internet through smart devices like smartphones and tablets. This clearly indicates chances for earning greater revenue from these sources. Track your mobile visitor metrics to understand your mobile customers and increase your conversions. This metric can answer:
- What percent of your traffic is mobile?
- Which devices and browsers do they use?
- Source – Where are they coming from direct, social, organic, referral, etc?
- Click Through Rate (CTR) – Measuring CTR is indispensable for ad campaigns. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) are viable sources for targeted traffic, these can be effectively measured by the figuring out the number of clicks a PPC ad receives based on the total number of impressions. For PPC campaigns, higher CTR helps to decrease cost per click, while lower CTR score can drive costs up.
- Cost Per Click (CPC) – CPC states how much you are going to pay the search marketing platform each time an internet user clicks on your PPC Ad. This value varies depending on the popularity of your chosen keyword or keyword phrases.
- Average Stay per Visit – This metric indicates how long your visitors stay on your site, it gives you an understanding on whether your campaign is generating engagement or not.
Read Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords Metrics
- Conversion metrics
Conversion metrics helps in determining how your web visitors are engaging with you post they reach your site. Here are some key metrics to track under conversion:
- Conversion Rate – This metric defines your digital marketing success by measuring how many website visitors get converted into leads or sale. Basically this metric represents the percentage of people who become customers after clicking your advertisement. A higher conversion rate means your website is doing an excellent job in expressing your company’s value proposition and convincing visitors to buy.
- Cost Per Lead (CPL) – The feat of a digital marketing campaign also depends on how well your website and content converts website traffic into leads or paying customers at nominal costs. CPL defines the lead conversion ratio of a particular digital marketing campaign and the corresponding cost, giving visions on the profitability of the campaign.
- Bounce Rate – This is the ratio of visitors who leave your site without exploring it. This metric is extremely useful as it indicates quick signals that your campaign needs adjustments. High bounce rates indicate problem areas and knowing bounce rates can give you right insights on how you could improve or optimize your campaign performance.
- Rate of Return Visitors – The rate of return visitors also indicates the popularity of your website. By knowing the Rate of Return Visitors you get real awareness on how to improve your content to lure site visitors who have not converted yet as leads or paying customers.
- Conversion Funnel Rates – This is a deeper look into the conversion process, it allows you to see where you need to strengthen your marketing strategies to move your leads effectively down the conversion funnel.
- Cost per Conversion – This metric gives you insights on the margins of your campaign, basically, it clues you on whether a campaign is worth its associated costs or not.
- Social metrics
Social media acts like wonders when it comes to spreading brand awareness, creating meaningful relationships and driving website traffic. How to ensure you are doing it right? Tracking the right KPIs is the key. Under the social metrics you should track:
- Reach – This one might be a soft metric, but understanding how many eyes could potentially be landing on your social media platform is vital. Increasing page likes and followers organically means something is definitely going in the right direction. Increased reach also increases the possibilities for increased engagement, and if engagement is not as desired adjust it to better suit your audience needs.
- Engagement – This one is critical for social media success, but it should not be linked to hard conversions on your website. Heedlessly, engagement is one of the key indicators of building brand identity. If your reach, engagement, and traffic from social channels are positive you can always expect conversion and increase in revenues as obvious results.
Read: Email Marketing Metrics You Should Be Sharing With Your Clients
- Revenue metrics (ROI)
Well ROI is what at the end determines the success of any digital marketing campaign. Your increasing website traffic, well-targeted PPC campaigns and solid conversion rates on your social media are all on one side, what ultimately determines the overall value of your campaigns is the amount of money you invested in breeding those conversions. ROI metric helps in identifying which area in your campaign is driving maximum sales and revenue and which areas require attention.
Why is it important to measure your digital marketing campaign efforts?
You cannot just develop a marketing campaign, set it and forget it. When you measure, monitor and analyze it, you have greater chances to dig in and see how things are actually performing. Here are few benefits of measuring your campaign efforts:
- Use your digital marketing budget powerfully
- Increase the effectiveness of your sales activity and improve your conversion rates
- Choose the right channels to reach your target audience
- Improve your ROI
- Make more real campaign decisions
The final note:
It is important to say again that each of these metrics explained above is a good indicator of how successful your digital marketing efforts are. By keeping a close eye them and analyzing trends discovered from such analytics can help you uncover the obstacles and opportunities faced by your campaigns. The idea is to leverage this information and incorporate it into your marketing strategies to keep your audiences engaged and increase conversions.
Also read 10 PPC blog that’s helped in the survival of my agency
