There are a ton of digital marketing metrics that you could measure.
When it comes to digital marketing, there are a seemingly endless amount of metrics that could be measured, but not all of them are worth your time or energy to keep a close eye on. Some metrics are “vanity metrics” or “popularity metrics” that may seem important but don’t actually give you much information.
One great example of a vanity metric is your email open rate. Just because someone has opened an email doesn’t mean they read it or connected with the content. Think about it — how many times have you opened an email but not actually read it? Your email open rate also won’t give you any information about how effective the content was or how much interest it generated.
Small business owners are busy and don’t have the time to waste on these kinds of metrics. However, there are a few main metrics that can keep you in the know about the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy, and they are definitely worth measuring on a regular basis.
5 Digital Marketing Metrics Every Business Should Measure
#1. How much revenue does each channel generate?
There are lots of avenues you could spend your marketing budget on. Should you focus your money on paid search ads, or is Facebook advertising a better use of your money? The answer to questions like this can only be answered by taking a long hard look at the revenue each channel is generating for you.
If your marketing budget is split between multiple channels, measuring revenue can help you decide which channels give you the best return on your investment. However, when determining which marketing channels to direct your marketing dollars to, keep in mind that some marketing channels generate revenue up-front but end up costing more in the end; whereas, others may be cost-effective long-term but won’t generate as much revenue in the beginning.
#2. How much does each lead cost?
Looking at the revenue each channel generates is a great first start in helping you determine where to put your marketing dollars, but it’s only a small part of the bigger picture. It’s also important to know how much each leads costs for each channel.
Knowing how much each lead costs will help you make important decisions about how you allocate your marketing budget, but just because a lead might be more costly on one channel than another doesn’t necessarily mean the channel is a poor investment. When you really dig in, you may determine that the leads you get from certain channels spend more money with you or convert at a higher rate. It’s also important to note that leads may touch multiple channels before eventually converting.
#3. What’s the conversion rate of your landing pages?
How effectively does the content on your landing pages resonate with your audience? Knowing the conversion rate of your landing pages will help you answer this question.
Landing pages are pages that are designed to increase conversions, and they are often found through organic searches or paid ads. The whole point of a landing page is to convert, and the only way to know how effective it is at doing so is to measure the conversion rate.
Once you know the conversion rate of your landing pages, you’ll be able to adjust the design and content of the pages so that it’s more effective. Does the headline grab attention and generate interest in the page? Does the subheadline give readers a good reason to stay on the page? Does the page feature prominent, high-quality images that are relevant to the service or product being promoted?
#4. What is your website’s bounce rate?
In a perfect world, every site visitor would become a paying customer, but in the world we live in, not everyone who visits your website is going to stick around or convert. When someone comes to your website and then clicks away after just a few seconds, that’s considered a bounce, and the bounce rate measures how many visitors come to your site and bounce.
It’s important to measure the bounce rate because it gives you important information about the effectiveness of your site, as well as the relevancy of your keywords. If you’re trying to rank for keywords that are irrelevant to your website, or your content isn’t a great indicator of what you actually have to offer, that can increase your bounce rate. It can also increase your bounce rate if your site design isn’t responsive to mobile, if the content is poorly formatted and unreadable, if the images are low quality, and if the site takes forever to load.
The bottom line is that knowing what kind of bounce rate you have is a great place to start when figuring out what you can do better on your website and landing pages.
#5. What is the lifetime value of each customer?
Digital marketing isn’t just about attracting new customers to your business online. It’s also about connecting with and nurturing the customers you have. After all, keeping your existing customers costs a whole lot less than working to acquire new ones.
Customer loyalty is worth its weight in gold. Existing customers are easier to market to and are more likely to spend more with your business than new customers. Existing customers are also less likely to turn to your competitors, and they’re often more willing to write reviews for your business and refer you to friends and family when asked.
Learning the lifetime value of your customers can help you understand how effective you are at keeping them. Do most of your customers stick around and make multiple purchases or utilize multiple services? Or do most of your customers move on after one purchase? If the majority of your customers aren’t sticking around after a purchase, it tells you that your post-purchase nurturing strategy needs some work.
There are so many marketing metrics a business could measure, but not all of them give you valuable information about your marketing strategy. Learning which metrics to measure will help you make most of every marketing dollar.
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