If digital marketing is all about two-way communication with your customers, you’re going to want to evaluate whether that conversation is happening on a 4G network or two tin cans tied by a length of string. We’re talking, of course, about measuring whether your digital marketing is actually working or not. Are your customers engaged and loyal? Are they talking to you and about you? How is the relationship going - and is it ultimately resulting in more sales for your business, your event, or your service? First, congratulations to you that you even care. So many companies only invest in
marketing when there’s money left over – there’s no fixed budget, and they have no real way of knowing, once the campaign is over, whether it worked or not. If you actually realize this is a problem, you’re ahead of the game! Just like the old woodcutting principle ‘measure twice, cut once’, the more thoroughly you measure your digital marketing results, the more targeted and effective your next marketing effort can be. So the question is, how do you distribute your precious digital-marketing dollars among the many possible media channels, to gain the greatest possible return on your investment? Should you focus on a better website, or hit up your email list? Pay-per-click, or SEO? Learning how to measure these results so you can decide these things scientifically, rather than using the eeny, meeny, miney, moe technique, will help you be confident about what you need to focus on. Here are five things every digital marketer needs to learn how to measure now:
Web traffic. Not just visits to your main site, but also hits on any special landing pages, whether you’ve created one for a specific pay-per-click campaign, for an upcoming event you’re hosting, or to capture email addresses so you can send out a free guide.
Organic growth. Organic is good for more than just beef and coffee; it’s a great way for your web traffic to be increasing. Organic growth means that visitors to your site are querying a search engine and finding you, which means your search engine optimization and marketing efforts are paying off.
Customer retention. Some businesses find it hard to measure how many customers are repeats, but e-commerce sites and subscription-based services can easily track this number. If customers aren’t returning to buy from you again and again, it could be a sign that your brand loyalty is suffering and needs a boost – maybe it’s time to run a promotion, or provide more value to your customers, to get them feeling good about your brand.
Cost of acquisition. This is how much money it costs you to get a sale. So if you spend $200 on a pay-per-click campaign and you get 10 leads from it, that’s amazing, it’s only $20 per lead. But how many of those leads are you converting into a sale? That’s the figure you want to divide your $200 by to see if your efforts are really paying off. Just don’t forget to factor in the time it took you to devise and implement the ad strategy – as an entrepreneur, your time is money, too.
Social media success. Everyone is talking about you on Facebook and Twitter…but what are they saying? Tools like Google Analytics aren’t necessarily going to tell you, but tools like Raven (https://raventools.com/) can track your tags and mentions to sort the good shout outs from the bad. That will tell you what you need to look into, and fix, to get the positive energy flowing again.
If you’re too busy doing what you do, to worry about all this…call us for a free brainstorming session where we can talk about what would help your business, and point you in the right direction. Sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/15/10-online-marketing-metrics-you-need-to-be-measuring/ https://fulcrumtech.net/resources/measure-digital-marketing-roi/
