Different business objectives are measured by different metrics. For example, if your business goal is to increase sales by 10%, you will use key performance indicators (KPI) such as revenue, number of qualified inbound leads, or contact form submission to track how many prospects are converting or interested in your products or services. If you want to enhance brand awareness, you will use metrics such as the number of unique web visitors, product reviews, or social mentions to determine the reach of your digital initiatives and growing popularity of your brand. Defining business objectives help you select the metrics that matter to your marketing programs. 

Basic metrics such as web traffic, bounce rate, and retweets are simple measurements for assessing digital marketing performance. These metrics are readily available in analytics software such as Google Analytics and social networks like Twitter. They are useful for understanding your brand’s online exposure, Twitter followers’ engagements, and web content quality. Once you have selected a group of metrics that gives you a general idea of how well your marketing programs are performing, you can slowly add more in-depth measurements such as cost-per-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rate to the set. Over time, you will have a collection of quality metrics that gives you a comprehensive view of your marketing results.

To narrow down the metrics you track to the few that really matter, develop a scorecard. Begin with the simple metrics discussed above, then add in others you feel are useful, such as: average time on site, % of return visitors, and average pageviews per visit. Monitor each metric week-over-week to see whether your performance is improving or declining. Additionally, determine whether the metrics give insights on your marketing programs. If certain metrics turn out to be insignificant, remove them and keep the ones that matter. Review and update your scorecard regularly.

 

By using the three approaches above, you can create metrics that are aligned with your business objectives and unveil valuable insights. If you want help with creating digital marketing metrics or results-driven marketing campaigns, contact us to book a complimentary meeting with one of our experts.