7 Most Important Metrics in Digital Marketing in 2018

Digital marketing does open new vistas for businesses, small and large to expand. Additionally, digital marketing provides the much-needed versatility to companies:-

It enables them to target specific niches, get their products and services popularized quickly and saves costs. Further, digital marketing enables firms to adapt quickly to prevailing market conditions and demands by adapting content.

Despite these inherent advantages, thousands of digital marketers are unable to derive full benefit. The prime reason is the inability or lack of resources to pinpoint whether a digital marketing drive is paying desired dividends.

This trend can be quickly reversed if your organization keeps tabs on certain vital metrics of digital markets.

Nowadays, software and systems that help you measure various key performance indicators of digital marketing are available. These can help you get the required metrics and revise or upscale digital marketing efforts.

Here are seven key metrics to measure the success of your digital marketing drive.

1: -Mobile Traffic:

According to Germany-based statistics provider, Statista, about 50 percent websites viewed worldwide were through smart-phones. This data was collected in February 2017 and hence, the figure would have risen. To measure the success of your digital marketing efforts, check whether content provided is easily accessible on smartphones and tablets.

Generally, most people access digital marketing content while on the move such as commutes and travel or during brief breaks during work hours.

Firstly, check whether content provided is mobile friendly. Other parameters you should consider are lead conversion rates from mobile devices, conversion per page landing and mobile bounce.

2:-Revenue Metrics:

Regardless of content quality, accessibility and reach, the ultimate measurement of digital marketing are calculated in terms of money it costs and revenues generated. Here, you need to keep tabs on costs incurred to bag a customer or retain existing ones through your expenses on paid websites, advertisements, personnel and digital marketing platforms.

Calculate costs incurred against the number of new customers and retained clients in terms of revenues earned. The second KPI is your return on investment. The success of your digital marketing is clearly indicated by the amount of money your company has earned.

3:-Conversion Metrics:

These are very tricky to measure and require intricate processes handled professionally. Digital marketing is all about making money. You need to monitor how many new customers patronized your products or services and the number of prospective new clients as well as retention and loyalty.

These can be measured through metrics such as average time spent on specific content on your website, the average cost per page view, cost per lead meaning how many potential customers you have attracted or led to your company and expense incurred, number of people who turned away immediately from your website or what is called “bounce traffic,” an average of pages viewed by each visitor.

Further, you also need to monitor return traffic, which indicates loyal customers generated by your firm.

4:-Social Media Interactions:

Every digital marketer has social media presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other platforms. The number of “likes” and “following” are not a clear indicator of the success of your digital marketing on social media. Instead, look for volume of interactions or comments, suggestions and complaints if any posted by users.

Another metric to measure on social media is the number of shares of any particular content. If your content is interesting and relevant, people following your social media pages are most likely to share it with relatives and friends.

This means, your digital marketing on social media is successful. If a volume of social interaction and shares is low, you definitely need to review your content and its relevance to users.

5:-Sources of Traffic:

Very vital metrics to know the success of your digital marketing efforts is to know and assess the sources of traffic to your websites and social media platforms. Here you can measure direct traffic- meaning visitors to your website who accessed directly.

Referral traffic- meaning audiences directed to your digital marketing content through a link on another website.

Organic or generic traffic- those searched for your company or similar ones, through a search engine. Campaign traffic or people who accessed your content during promos and special offers launched by your company.

The higher your traffic rates, the better your digital marketing campaign. If these rates are dismal, it is best to review digital marketing strategies and content quality.

6:-Active and Passive Engagement:

Active engagement means finding metrics of people who registered on your website and liked your social media pages. It also means finding out how many minutes on average a visitor spent on your digital content, identifying content most popular and the number of return visitors.

Passive engagement generally involves downloads of your app or software or other interesting freebies that you offer as part of digital marketing. Some reputed firms offer free wallpapers and screensavers with images of their products, games and other freebies to passively engage customers through digital marketing.

However, mobile apps by far are the best way to engage your customer passively as they would invariably search for content and offer during free time.

7:-Geography and Demographics:

Knowing who is accessing your digital marketing content and from which part of the country or world is very important. Your content could be targeted at niche audience in a specific geographic zone. You need to keep an eye on how many people within this limited area are accessing your digital marketing content.

This helps identify and better serve those markets. It also helps adapt content to suit local tastes. Demographic and geographic metrics for access outside your zone of operation shows you have a potential to expand the reach of your products or services or the existence of an export market or suppliers hitherto unknown and untapped.

However, you need also to find out why your content is being accessed outside the intended geographic and demographic zone.

In Conclusion

Measuring the success of any digital marketing effort can often be difficult. Though there is loads of software available for the purpose, the veracity of reports they generate can be subject to debate. The best indicator for every digital marketing effort remains revenues generated.

Before embarking on getting, it is best to formulate a sound yet flexible strategy for digital marketing. Include measurement and metrics as part of the strategy. Keeping an eye on metrics is a regular function. Meaning, traffic needs be monitored daily for peaks, medians, and troughs.

While you can do some monitoring of metrics through software and tools available on your website, the best strategy is to recruit a professional or outsource the function to an external provider.

Author Bio:

Pritam Nagrale is a blogger and running a digital marketing company in Mumbai. His blog MoneyConnexion writes about make money ideas & tips on Saving Money.

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