After successfully creating a digital marketing strategy, you now have to make sure that your marketing strategy actually works in helping you achieve your business goals. To do this, you need to schedule regular meetings that are to be attended by key decision-makers in running your digital marketing campaign. You also need to have a clear plan of how you are going to evaluate every digital marketing strategy aspect of your campaign.
The next time you assemble your team for a sit-down meeting, make sure to review your digital marketing strategy effectively and objectively. In this article, allow us to share some of the best practices that you can use to evaluate the different aspects of digital marketing before starting a new year in business.
Identify Statistics to Track
Before you can evaluate whether your digital marketing strategy is working or not, you must first identify key performance indicators (KPIs) and other digital marketing metrics. These statistics are success factors that will tell you if you are heading in the right direction or not.
Some of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you need to take a look at include:
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Cost per lead (CPL)
This KPI measures how cost-effective your digital marketing strategy is when it comes to generating new leads for your business. In other words, it refers to the amount of money spent to generate a new prospective client. Cost per lead lets your team know if you are spending an appropriate amount on different digital marketing avenues.
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Sales revenue
Sales revenue refers to the income derived from the sales of the products and services that your company offers before any expenses and other operating costs are deducted from it. This key performance indicator is usually calculated over a defined period of time (e.g., financial year or quarter).
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Customer value
This key performance indicator is best defined as how much your products and services are worth to your customers. Customer value is the measure of all the costs and benefits that your products and services are associated with. These include the price, quality, and utility or purpose to the customers.
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Lead-to-customer conversion rate
Lead-to-customer conversion rate refers to the proportion of qualified leads that result in actual sales. Also known as sales conversion rate or lead conversion rate, this key performance indicator is critical to evaluating the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy. It is the ratio of the total number of leads to the total number of visitors.
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Website traffic lead ratio
This key performance indicator tells you how many of those who visited your website actually converted to leads. In other words, it is the percentage of web visitors that turned into leads in a specific period of time. To calculate your website traffic lead ratio, you need to divide the number of your web visits by the number of leads generated over the same time frame.
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The volume of organic traffic
In digital marketing, organic traffic refers to the traffic generated to your website through organic means only. In other words, this is the number of visitors that land on your website from unpaid sources or those web visitors that have found your website after using a search engine like Google.
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Inbound marketing return on investment (ROI)
At its most basic definition, inbound marketing return on investment (ROI) represents the total sale made to a client, minus the cost it takes on average to acquire a customer through inbound marketing as well the cost to deliver your product or service to the client.
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Landing page conversion rate
This key performance indicator in digital marketing refers to the number of visitors who completed a call to action against everyone who landed on a specific web page. For instance, if you expect your web visitors to fill out an online form on your Contact Us page, then the landing page conversion rate of that page is the number of people who filled out the form divided by the total number of page visitors.
After deciding what is important to you as a business owner, you now need to set specific goals before launching a successful digital marketing strategy this new year. To measure the success of these goals, you need to consider these digital marketing metrics:
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Overall website traffic
This digital marketing metric refers to the volume of users who are visiting your business website. How many individuals visit your website will be affected by many factors, which can include the purpose of your website, the visitor’s own goals, and the way or method in which your visitors discover your website.
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Traffic by source
In web analytics, a traffic source is an origin by which internet users can find your website. By identifying your traffic sources, you will be able to understand the sources that are attracting the most or least users and give you a better grasp of the traffic flow to your website.
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New visitors vs. returning visitors
In Google Analytics, new visitors or new users are those who have never been to your business website before. On the other hand, returning visitors or returning users are individuals who previously visited your website and have come back. The new vs. returning visitor data can help you understand how your website caters to the needs of different types of web users.
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Sessions
A web session refers to a series of user interactions with your business website that occur within a given time frame that is stored on a web server. A single session may include multiple pageviews, social interactions, ecommerce transactions, and other online events. By default, a session lasts until 30 minutes of inactivity, but this limit can be adjusted.
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Average session duration
Google Analytics calculates your website’s average session duration by dividing the total duration of all sessions (in seconds) during a given time frame by the total number of web sessions during the same time frame. For Google Analytics to compute the time spent on the last web page the web user visits, the user must perform an action on that page.
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Most visited pages
To ensure that your business website will achieve its goals, one of the things that you need to do is understand what web pages are the most popular among your web visitors. The home page is usually the most visited page. You will also need to pay close attention to the second, third, and fourth most popular pages.
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Exit rate
A web page’s exit rate will tell you how often web visitors leave your website after visiting a specified number of pages. The exit rate is calculated by dividing the number of exits by the number of pageviews for a particular page. By knowing which pages your users are exiting the most, you will be able to identify which pages need to be improved.
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Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is a digital marketing term used in web analytics. This metric refers to the percentage of visitors who landed on your business website and then left rather than continuing to view other pages. It is calculated by dividing the number of single-page web sessions by the total number of sessions your website has in a given time frame.
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Conversion rate
Conversion rate, as a digital marketing metric, refers to the percentage of web sessions in which the users completed the desired action for a specific page. Desired actions may include making a purchase, downloading an ebook, filling out an online form, or subscribing to a newsletter. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the complete number of those sessions.
The above-mentioned metrics are mostly applicable to your business website. Aside from these website-related metrics, there are also other digital marketing KPIs that you might want to consider. These KPIs include:
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Impressions
In digital marketing, an impression refers to when an advertisement or any other form of digital media is rendered on a user’s screen. Unlike most digital marketing metrics, impressions are not action-based and merely cover the chances that a user may potentially see the advertisement. This is a common metric for measuring the performance of many types of digital marketing campaigns.
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Social media reach
In a more general sense, reach refers to the total number of web users who have seen your advertisement or content. If a total of 100 individuals have seen your ad, this means that your reach, when quantified, is 100. On the other hand, social media reach is the measure of how many users have seen your digital marketing content on social media platforms.
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Social media engagement
Social media engagement covers all your efforts to communicate and engage with an online community. These conversations can take place on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or in blogs, user forums, and review sites. A strong social media engagement strategy allows you to stay connected with your customers while also advancing marketing interests.
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Click-through rate
In digital marketing, CTR or click-through rate is the metric that measures the number of clicks advertisers receive on their ads per number of impressions. In other words, it is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the total number of people who have seen your web page, email, or advertisement.
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Cost per click
Cost per click (CPC), also called pay per click (PPC), is an online advertising revenue model wherein a web publisher receives a cost payment from an advertiser per every click on an advertisement. Using this model, website owners bill advertisers based on the number of times web visitors click on an ad displayed on their website.
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Cost per conversion
There are many ways in which you can measure how well your digital marketing campaign is doing. One of the easiest ways to do this is by determining your cost per conversion. This digital marketing metric refers to the ratio of the number of ad views to the number of successful conversions resulting from those ad views.
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Cost per acquisition
Cost per acquisition, in digital marketing, refers to the metric that measures the total cost of a completed customer action. Measuring your cost per acquisition will let you know how much it costs your business to get a single customer down your sales funnel.
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Overall ROI
In marketing, the return on investment or ROI is the measure of how your marketing programs and campaigns generate revenue for your business.
Set a Time Frame
As mentioned in the previous section, it is important to schedule regular meetings with your digital marketing team. It can be done weekly or monthly depending on what works for your team. What is important is that you specify a concrete time frame. You have to make sure that in each meeting, you review all your digital marketing targets and goals and how well your strategy is doing in meeting them. Also, don’t forget to take a look at your web statistical data from Google Analytics, Webmaster tools, and SEO reports. In doing this, you will be able to make adjustments to your digital marketing strategy along the way.
Examine the Components of Your Marketing Strategy Individually
In ensuring the success of your digital marketing strategy, you will have to consider a lot of components. These components of digital marketing will depend on your business goals, but in general, here are the most common:
- Your company’s value proposition
- Your competitive advantage in the market
- Your target demographics
- Your marketing message
- Your brand identity
For most businesses, a digital marketing strategy will cover a broad area. To ensure optimal results, these digital marketing elements must be examined individually so you will be able to identify which aspects need improvement.
By examining all components one by one, you will have a clear definition of your marketing plan. It also helps keep your marketing efforts focused.
Identify Redundancies and Points of Failure
No matter how well-designed your digital marketing strategy is, there is always room for improvement. There will be areas that you will unintentionally overlook despite how careful you have been during the planning process. This is where the SWOT analysis can help.
The SWOT analysis is a comprehensive audit system that can help you identify internal and external factors which can affect the success of your marketing efforts. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strengths and weaknesses refer to internal business factors, while opportunities and threats are those factors outside of your company. When done correctly, the SWOT analysis can give you a clear picture of what sets you apart from your competitors.
Review Your Conversions
An ideal digital marketing strategy should cover all your business objectives and specify the steps on how you are going to execute them. When this is done correctly, your digital marketing strategy can also be used as a tool to determine whether your conversions are happening when and where they are desired. When you are clear on where and when your conversions are taking place, you will be able to make better and more informed business decisions.
What’s the Takeaway?
To sum it up, you need to set a foundation that establishes the direction where you want your business to head. You can do this by creating a digital marketing plan that incorporates your business goals, tactics, strategies, key performance indicators (KPIs), and proven evaluation methods.
In the age of digital transformation, your presence in the digital world matters more than ever before. Therefore, it makes perfect business sense to set a part of your schedule to regularly evaluate how well your digital marketing strategy is performing. You can use the practices discussed in this article to come up with a plan for evaluating the different aspects of your digital marketing strategy.
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