Sometimes it helps to remember the cliché. What cannot be monitored cannot be measured. Assuming your brand has adapted to be digitally savvy and connected with users important to your bottom line. Online marketing strategies have been carefully designed and intelligently implemented. But what about tracking these efforts?
Measuring performance and comparing results to an established performance baseline is key to identifying areas of success and weaknesses in your online marketing programs. Although there are several metrics that need to be measured, here are the top ten for your dashboard that you can’t miss! We’ve broken them down into three specific categories: traffic generation, conversion, and revenue metrics.
traffic metrics
1. General site traffic: The Google Analytics dashboard is a treasure trove of metrics! Use it to measure your overall site traffic, which not only includes overall page views or the number of website visits, but also the number of unique website visitors per week and on a monthly basis.
2. Traffic sources: This is a great metric for evaluating whether or not a certain set of keywords or channels are working for you and whether or not your traffic distribution is ‘healthy’; relying on a single source for the majority of your traffic can cause problems if that source changes or ceases to exist. Access the Channel and Source/Medium reports in Google Analytics for detailed traffic information such as traffic source, referral traffic, and promotional activity traffic. Additionally, you can also incorporate metrics to understand your mobile audience.
3. Email subscribers: Free tools like Feedio provide metrics like email subscriptions per post and subscriber tracking. These metrics will help you understand which topics and content resonate well with your audience.
4. Social sharing account: Social sharing metrics help you track the number of times each post has received on each social media site. You can use tools like Social Metrics to track the shareability of each post; Per-post level tracking helps you understand what content your social audience likes and dislikes, and you can implement improvements accordingly.
5. Click-Through Rate: CTR is a metric that measures how many people actually clicked on your pay-per-click (PPC) ads every time your ad is viewed and an impression is created. A higher CTR means a better Quality Score, which translates to lower Google AdWords PPC costs.
Conversion metrics
6. Conversion rate: Also known as call-to-action rates, CVRs measure the number of website visitors that convert into valuable leads. Understanding your CVRs can help you assess which aspects of your digital marketing campaigns have performed best, so you can benchmark your next set of campaigns. Use tools like Bit.ly and Kissmetrics to measure your CVRs or CTAs and work to optimize your campaigns.
7. Bounce rate: Another metric that helps you assess your content’s resonating abilities with your audience, bounce rate measures site visitors who leave your site immediately after arriving, if they find your content irrelevant. Bounce rate helps you improve the quality or impact of your content.
8. Returning Visitors: It’s important to measure the rate of return of your site’s traffic to get an idea of the ideal goals for converting leads. The higher the return rate of your visitors, the more interested they will be in your brand’s online activities. Use this metric to target returning visitors with offers that are hard to resist.
revenue metrics
9. Return on Investment: The ROI metric measures website traffic that converts into revenue generators for your business. This metric helps you identify areas of your digital marketing campaigns that are working well to drive your revenue and profits and areas of opportunity.
10. Customer Acquisition Cost: Better known as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), this metric is measured by dividing the total cost of online marketing efforts during a particular period by the number of new buyers for that period. This can be further broken down by source to assess the best sources for conversion.
These 10 key metrics are a must for your digital marketing dashboard, helping you gain incredible insight into what’s working for you, what aspects of your campaign can be improved, and what features you need to remove. Measuring your campaigns from the traffic-generating stage to the revenue-generating stage is a wise move to establish a general hold on your digital marketing efforts.