Perhaps more than any other kind of marketing, digital marketing at its best is like a symphony of different notes played by different instruments at different intervals. By its nature, it is marketing across multiple platforms with multiple forms of content at multiple times. Therefore, careful orchestration is the key to making a digital campaign really work.
Orchestrating a great digital campaign requires constant fine-tuning.
Just as musicians in a symphony have to tune their instruments before they play, so too digital marketers have to fine tune their campaigns to shift as situations change. What worked yesterday is not guaranteed to work tomorrow.
The question, then, is: What can you do to ensure that your campaigns are performing at their best? The answer lies in measuring the success of your campaign and making adjustments, or fine-tuning, as necessary.
There are a variety of metrics that you can use to pinpoint areas that need attention. The broad categories which you must measure are: traffic metrics, conversion metrics, and revenue metrics. Here are some good metrics to capture in each category to get you started:
Traffic metrics are just like they sound. They center on the methods by which leads interact with your brand via your website. Here are some key metrics for traffic:
Total Visits: This is the total number of visitors to your website. It is important because it gives you a big-picture look at overall traffic over time.
Traffic by Source: This metric is useful because it drills down a little more deeply into your overall traffic metric. Here you can determine from where your web visitors are coming. For instance, this metric lets you know if traffic is coming from a search query, a link from another source, social media, or by means of actually typing your URL into their browser. Knowing the source of your traffic helps you pinpoint where you need to focus future marketing efforts.
New Visitors/Returning Visitors: While this may not seem all that important at first glance, it is actually a very useful metric to have. The article "18 Essential Metrics to Measure Your Digital Marketing" explains why, saying: "This is an important distinction to track; return visitors give you an indication of the usefulness and quality of your content - whether it's "sticky" enough to attract multiple visits. Tracking this ratio week over week and month over month shows you how your new content is performing."
Conversion metrics help you determine how your web visitors are engaging once they reach your site. Here are some key metrics for conversion:
Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of visitors who leave your site without exploring. This metric is useful because generally a high bounce rate gives you a quick signal that your campaign needs adjustment.
Total Conversions: This metric is highly important, since the aim of your marketing campaign is to prompt conversions. This metric is of interest to you as a marketer, and to anyone in your organization tasked with the job of allocating funding for the marketing budget. Good numbers here mean good marketing.
Click Through Rates: Measuring click through rates is an important part of managing email and PPC campaigns. The infographic "14 Most Important Metrics to Focus in Your Digital Marketing Campaign" explains why this is so, stating: "The higher the CTR, the better your Quality Scores will be, allowing you to lower your PPC costs by receiving pricing discounts from Search Engine Marketing platforms like Google AdWords."
Conversion Funnel Rates: This deeper look into the conversion process, level by level, allows you to see where you need to bolster your marketing strategies to move your leads effectively to conversion.
Cost per Conversion: This metric clues you in on whether a campaign is worth its associated costs. To put it simply, this metric helps you understand your margins.
Cost per Acquisition: This metric should not be confused with cost per conversion. Because "conversion" can be defined in a number of ways, that metric is broader in scope than is this one. Cost per acquisition captures the cost associated with getting a lead to become an actual paying customer. It is tied completely to revenue, not merely to engagement of any kind on the part of a lead.
Return on Investment: This is the final word on your campaign. It represents the cost of your campaign compared to the revenue your campaign actually generates. This is the metric that is of interest to the C-suite, and is likely the metric which will determine your allocation of the organizational budget in the future.Measurement of key performance indicators helps you
fine-tune your digital marketing strategy.
While these are by no means all of the metrics that can inform your future marketing strategies, they are some of the more enlightening ones for figuring out where your campaigns are strong, and where they need some fine-tuning.
Still not sure about what to measure and how to analyze your data? There's no need to worry. Request an assessment today, and let us help ensure your marketing strategy is pitch perfect.