Remember in your high school math classes when your teacher would urge you to “show your work.” Well, we are going to need you to channel that approach for this post. In the past we’ve talked a lot about tracking your marketing data, using tools to analyze what performs well and why, the role of big data in content creation, etc.
All of this comes down to which metrics your team is tracking. Different metrics will tell you different things about your marketing efforts. For SMBs this can be mildly overwhelming. While understanding your content through data is a critical component of modern marketing, there are just SO many possible metrics.
This post is here to narrow down the list for you. While bigger businesses often have whole teams dedicated to tracking these metrics, SMBs often don’t have these kinds of resources.
So, we’ve boiled down digital marketing metrics into a list of five must-track components. Let’s take a closer look:
1. Total Visits:
Any marketing campaign aims to give your business more visibility. When it comes to customer visibility the next best thing to a store visit is a website visit. In terms of digital marketing, it is important to track the total number of visits your website is getting in order to better understand if your marketing is actively driving traffic, explained Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers.
For healthy campaigns numbers for this metric should continually be rising at a steady rate – if they are not it is time to reevaluate your marketing strategy. In essence, this metric is important because it helps your team to understand how much visibility your marketing is actually producing.
2. Customer Acquisition Cost:
It’s no secret that attracting new customers is an important practice for any business. Marketing is aimed at this goal. You want to attract customers (new and old) to do business with you. However, one important metric asks the question: Are you paying too much to attract new customers?
According to The Business Journals, customer acquisition cost is one of the most important digital marketing metrics for your business to take into consideration. When your efforts cost more than you will get in return, that is a clear sign of trouble. This metric helps you pinpoint if you have made sufficient investments in marketing and ultimately helps you decide if your current efforts are worth your budget allocation. The source explained that business leaders can calculate this metric by dividing all costs associated with marketing combined with sales costs by the number of new clients.
3. Total Conversions:
In terms of profitability, conversion metrics reign supreme. There are a lot of different ways to define conversions based on your business. Conversions could present themselves as a filled-out lead form or a completed checkout but the important thing to remember here is that conversions are ALWAYS a win for your marketing efforts.
In fact, they are one of the most coveted quantifiable victories for marketing materials. According to DeMers, SMB leaders can measure this metric directly on their website or through tools like Google Analytics. Tracking this metric consistently helps businesses keep a hand on the pulse of their marketing progress. As with most of the metrics on this list, good numbers are a green light to keep doing what you’re doing and low numbers are cause for a new strategy.
4. Traffic Sources:
Platforms play an important role in marketing. SMB leaders need to understand what leads visitors to their website. Is a recent Facebook post driving new users to your page? Was that website Ad a source of increased traffic? This metric has a variety of moving parts, according to The Business Journals.
Channels can vary from paid traffic, social traffic, organic traffic and email marketing campaigns. All these different avenues make it even more important to understand what works and what doesn’t. This metric makes our list because it helps you better understand where your marketing materials are best suited to drive more visibility with your audience – a critical component of a successful campaign.
5. Bounce Rate:
Bounce rate is a term that is thrown around often among marketers. In essence, it shows you what percent of visitors to your website leave before delving in deeper. So what does this actually look like? If your website comes up in a search and a user clicks it but leaves before clicking onto other tabs or links that is considered a bounce, explained DeMers.
In general, you want low bounce rates for your site. The longer a person spends with your website and its material, the more likely they are to make a purchase or conversion. This metric is something that can fall under the umbrella of user engagement as it tells your team something about how well the content on your website draws the attention of visitors.
Chasing better results from your digital marketing efforts can be time-consuming, and that’s why we’re here to help!
