You want to run a digital marketing campaign but don’t know how effective it is or you don’t want to crunch up those boring numbers and graphs to analyze the result. This article will help shine some light on those various metrics and ways to measure them.
According to CoSchedule, “A marketing metric is a quantifiable variable that can be measured to track performance” (CoSchedule, n.d.). Metrics are very important for an organization, as without them a company cannot know or measure the impact of what their digital marketing has brought to the organization.
Different digital marketing channels are used by companies and they have to be monitored using different metrics. Some of the examples of different digital marketing channels are:
· Apps
· Blogs
· Websites
· Emails
· Social Media Networks
· Online Video
· Micro sites
· Mobile Ads
· Social Media Ads
· SEO
· PPC
These are just some of the most popular channels that are used for conducting digital marketing. There are many, many more channels to choose from. Digital channels can always be added or reduced; they are not something that can remain permanent. They can be changed as per the circumstances change or as required. The effectiveness of different channels can be measured and re-calibrated/ reconsidered as per change in strategy or market conditions.
The different digital marketing channels have their own metrics/ ways to measure and they need to be analyzed accordingly. Below we see some metrics and analysis methods for some of the most popular channels.
Website Metrics
We can measure website performance by using the following methods:
· Referral traffic – Web traffic referred to a site
· Organic - Unpaid traffic via search engines
· Count total visits – Number of hits on the site
· Average visit duration – Time spent by users on a page before they leave
· Bounce rate – Track users who exit site after visiting only one page
How to analyze them:
· Google Analytics can be used to measure traffic and website related information
· Adobe Marketing Cloud and Go Squared can help with real-time and predictive analysis of the website performance
· Sales Force Social Studio is an analytics platform that combines search, social listening and marketing analytics
SEO Metrics
· Keyword rankings – How a page ranks in search engines for a given word
· Search traffic – Amount of referral traffic sent to the site through searches
· Organic click through rate – Counts if searchers click through the link as shown in search results
How to analyze them:
· Google Analytics
· HubSpot
· Moz
Social Media Marketing Metrics
Couple of methods are listed below:
· Likes – Number of likes on the post or comments
· Shares – Number of times the post has been shared, tweeted, retweeted etc.
· Follower growth rate and new followers – Measure how fast a profile is increasing its follower numbers
How to analyze them:
· Social Studio is an analytics platform that combines search, social listening and inbound marketing analytics. Using the ‘Analyze’ function to examine social media listening and more.
· Sprout Social or Simply Measured can get data and analyze it from various social media networks
· Social Bakers Analytics also provides comparative analysis with competitors and social analytics
· Google Trends analyses the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages.
Google Analytics has numerous ways to analyze and track most of these metrics. Success of the campaign can be measured once targets and goals are reached/achieved. Once there is good quantifiable data available from these various measurement sources, a company can make changes or re-calibrate their digital and social marketing strategies as per the information provided by the analysis and also as per the market, technological and economic conditions. They should immediately act upon any changes brought forward by the analytics and immediately execute action when needed but any new approach should be taken with full caution and consideration. Always check back with the initial goals and targets of the company that were set initially and make sure that the new metrics align to those existing goals and targets. This can include adding or changing digital marketing channels or adding or removing social media platforms from the strategy as needed. By actively tracking and monitoring the campaign, the organization can measure their performance and respond in real time and also plan better for their next digital marketing adventure!
References:
CoSchedule. (n.d.). Marketing Strategy Guide.
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