Digital marketing may have some similarities to traditional marketing, but in practice, you cannot use the same tools or strategies and expect success. The same is true when it comes to looking at the results of the campaign. It’s not enough to look at the cost of the campaign and compare it to your profits over that specific period of time. Instead, you need to focus on specific metrics that will help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and how well your digital marketing efforts are paying off.
Measuring Success in Digital Marketing
Success in digital marketing is not always a direct increase in sales. Some campaigns are aimed at creating new leads, building an email list, increasing website traffic, etc. So, not all metrics are interchangeable for every campaign goal. Some metrics are only meant for specific campaign types and aren’t relevant to other areas of digital marketing.
For the most important marketing metrics that are relevant to every campaign, you have to think in broader terms. Success must always be able to be measured, even in areas of digital marketing that seems more indirect, such as social media marketing. You may be able to apply some specific metrics to a more targeted campaign, but keep your eye on the long-term, broad metrics that will show how well you’re doing overall.
The 7 Most Important Metrics in Digital Marketing
1. Number of New Leads
Without new leads, you cannot hope to thrive for long as a business. Leads are generated from many different sources, but they are all important as a potential source of sales revenues. Without growing lead, difficult have difficultly growing sales. For digital marketing purposes, you should pay close attention to leads being generated to know which strategies are effective and which are not.
2. Conversion Rate
Having many leads is great, but converting those leads is the most important part of your marketing efforts. Your conversion rate is measured by the percentage of leads who end up as customers of your business. High conversion rates are preferred, as it means you’re probably doing a great job of converting leads. Low conversion rates may indicate a problem with your offer, the steps needed to convert, or something else in the process.
It’s good to note that conversion rates are meant to be observed on a monthly or yearly basis, not daily. Daily conversion rates can give irrelevant information with percentages that sometimes end up above 100%. This can be misleading and confusing, so it is more useful to look at your conversion rate in a larger scale.
3. Cost Per Conversion
Too much focus is put on the cost per click (CPC) in direct advertising. It’s good to know how much you’re paying per click, but you must understand that clicks do not always translate into conversion. It’s more important to know what you’re paying per conversion, so you can know if your landing page is doing an effective job at converting people.
For example, a campaign that costs $5 per click and has a conversion rate of 25% ends up costing $20 per conversion. Another campaign might cost $10 per click, but if it converts 80% of people it costs $12.50 per conversion. The first campaign might be cheaper on paper, but the second campaign yields better overall results.
4. Bounce Rate
This refers to how “sticky” your website is. When people come to your website, how long do they stay? Bounce rate is determined by measuring the average number of people that leave after only visiting one page. A low bounce rate is usually preferred, as it means people are finding some value in your website and are visiting more than just the page they landed on. A high bounce rate may mean you need to re-work your landing pages to give people reason to stick around.
Note: In some limited circumstances, bounce rate may not be relevant to your campaign. An example may be when your intention is just to show visitors something that’s limited to one page. If you’re not trying to get anything further from them on your actual website, a high bounce rate may not be a bad sign.
5. Total Website Traffic
As a rule of thumb, if you’re doing a great job with your digital marketing than your overall traffic should be increasing steadily. This means you’re slowly gaining new visitors while also retaining some of your previous visitors. If your total traffic is staying constant or decreasing, it’s a sign that your campaign may not be doing well. You’ll want to observe metric #7 below to get more direct information.
6. New Versus Returning Traffic
Customer retention takes a few different forms in digital marketing, one of which is returning visitors to your website. While you need to keep an eye on your overall traffic, it’s also useful to know if people are visiting for the first time or coming back to another session. Having frequent new visitors is great, but if you’re getting more new people than returning people, that signals a problem. You may need to work on making your website more valuable for repeat visitors.
7. Traffic Channels
Where are people coming from? There are numerous analytics tools that can give you this kind of information today. Instead of making assumptions about which marketing tool is working the best, you can look at the data and find out how many visitors are coming from each place. This data is collected by examining where the visitor was just prior to visiting your page. You’ll be able to find out if they came to you from social media, Google search, a backlink, or otherwise.
Measurement is one of the most important parts of any goal. You must be able to measure your success in order to know where you’re at and how to improve in the future. These 7 metrics help you get a good idea about how your digital marketing strategies are working and what you may need to adjust for further success.
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