August 18

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Measuring Online Success: Vital Marketing Metrics You Must Monitor Closely

By Hanson Cheng

August 18, 2023


  • minute read

Do you know what your online success looks like? 

If not, then this article is for you. We're going to explore the most vital digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) that any marketer or entrepreneur should monitor closely. Do you wonder how well your marketing campaign is performing? Or if it's worth all the time and effort? These are questions every business owner must ask themselves regularly, and there are multiple ways to measure them. 

For you to keep track of your performance effectively, you need to have a system in place where they can see metrics on campaign engagement, conversion rates, traffic sources, and more. This will help them determine which digital marketing campaigns are working well and which ones may need some adjustments.

Why Measure The Success Of Digital Marketing?

Here’s why you should measure the success of your online marketing.

1. Increase Website Traffic:

If marketing is the lifeblood of businesses, then marketing metrics are the heartbeat. Diving deep into what is KPI and measuring marketing performance will help measure marketing success and identify how effective marketing efforts were, i.e. if it increased website traffic or not.

2. Establish Baseline:

One of the most important things about digital marketing is having a baseline for your metrics to ensure trends are heading in the right direction. Two of the most important marketing metrics you should monitor are website metrics and search engine optimization.

3. Gain New Customers:

Another digital marketing goal is to generate more leads, which means generating organic SEO traffic that turns into paying customers or subscribers. The best way to do so is by campaigns directed at a target market. Marketing analytics software makes marketing more targeted and effective.

4. Weigh ROI:

Which marketing channel is most effective? It's important to know that marketing efforts are producing results. If you want to find out the marketing channels that are working, then look at your metrics. This will not only help determine marketing effectiveness but marketing ROI as well.

5. Learn From Your Mistakes:

If your metrics are off track, then you know it's time to make a change and course correct. Take online marketing, for example Do the campaigns look promising? Or should they be removed from the campaign list? Measure marketing performance will help answer these questions.

6. Better Communicate With Your Team:

One of the marketing goals is to provide metrics that will help communicate with your team so they can understand marketing performance and what marketing channels are working or not. An "in-depth" analysis using digital marketing KPIs can improve communication, productivity levels, marketing efficiency, time management, marketing costs, marketing ROI, and marketing effectiveness.

7. Create New Marketing Ideas:

If the marketing metrics performance analysis shows that marketing is not doing well or a certain campaign isn't performing as expected, then it's time to create new marketing ideas. Marketers can use the data they received through measurement tools to come up with new marketing ideas, campaigns, marketing programs, or even marketing strategies.

8. Reduce Costs:

By identifying marketing channels that are not working and by looking at your metrics you can reduce marketing costs by focusing on the channels that are producing results. This will allow you to better analyze where your marketing budget should be allocated and invest more in the marketing channels that are producing marketing results.

9. Save Time:

Measuring metrics will help save you time by showing marketing trends, which campaigns need to be removed from the campaign list, and which digital marketing strategies are working or not. It'll also help you identify why marketing is failing so you can take the right course of action and eliminate marketing channels that are not performing.

10. Increase Brand Loyalty:

Creating marketing campaigns that focus on your brand message and marketing goals will help increase brand loyalty. After analyzing metrics, you can change marketing channels or marketing strategies, remove marketing channels that have an unsuccessful performance and implement new marketing tactics to build upon current campaigns. It'll also help determine digital marketing spend, ROI and effectiveness.  Measuring marketing performance will help determine tactics that work for your marketing goals and brand message.

Now that you know the benefits of measuring success, let’s get into the different metrics to keep a close eye on.

Digital Marketing Metrics To Keep Tabs On

The key digital marketing metrics you should monitor closely include:

Basic Online Marketing Metrics

Below are essential marketing metrics you should master.

Marketing ROI:

This is how we calculate this metric: (profit from sales - marketing expenses) / marketing expenses) * 100. It's an important metrics marketing metric that shows whether marketing activities are generating profit.

Cost Per Lead:

Marketing metrics marketing metric is used to measure the marketing budget spent for marketing leads. This marketing metrics marketing metric is important because it helps you analyze which marketing activities are generating more leads.

Conversion Rate

Marketing campaigns are set up with marketing objectives in mind so you will want to measure your marketing tactics and goals to determine how well you're performing. The conversion rate is the most important marketing metric because it ties back directly to your marketing strategy.

Website Metrics That Matter

Source: Pixabay

Website metrics are crucial marketing KPIs that all digital marketers should monitor daily. It's a good idea to have these listed out on a weekly marketing dashboard so they're easy to see and track over time. 

You will want to measure the number of visitors, bounce rate, page views per visit, average time on page, and how many pages they visited in total. You can even measure the number of new versus returning visitors and aim marketing efforts at either of these groups to meet your marketing objectives.

Let's look at each metric:

  • Number of website visitors: This is the total number of visits to your eCommerce site. The more new visitors to your website, the greater the marketing exposure and brand awareness you have online.
  • Bounce rate: An important marketing aim is to get people to spend more time on your site so they can learn about you and your products or services. If you have a high bounce rate, the visitor leaves the website before viewing two pages. A low bounce rate shows they are engaged in what you're doing.
  • Page views: Website traffic sources will vary depending on what marketing strategies are being used. If your marketing goal is to reach more people through social media platforms, it is important to measure how many of them viewed other pages within the site in real-time.
  • Average time on page: This marketing metric measures a visitor's engagement with your content based on their visit length and also shows the quality of those visitors.
  • Pages visited: Campaigns comprise many marketing tactics, including content marketing like ebooks and white papers. You can measure how many visitors to your site actually download your marketing materials.
  • Traffic Sources: Traffic sources will vary depending on the marketing tactics being used. In the marketing world, marketing tactics. It is important to monitor where your website traffic is coming from so you can make adjustments based on what's working and what's not.
  • Traffic by Channel: Marketing channels vary based on what marketing strategies are being used. A digital marketer will want to analyze how traffic is being directed to the website and how marketing strategies are driving traffic.

There are some websites such as Google Analytics, that offer marketing funnel tracking. This marketing funnel is where you set marketing objectives, and as the website visitor moves through your marketing efforts (traffic sources) you can track every step of the way to see how many marketing tactics they're engaging with and which ones are not working. You'll also be able to see what marketing tactic each marketing campaign uses.

Every marketing campaign comprises marketing tactics, and those tactics help you reach marketing objectives. Let's look at a marketing example: Your marketing objective is to increase the number of people who subscribe to your blog so you can sell more products. You also have a marketing goal to generate 20 leads per month. And marketing objectives include increasing your social media following and increasing website traffic.

As a marketing leader, your job is to develop marketing strategies that drive awareness of your brand, increase engagement with your marketing content, and ultimately help you generate sales leads. Marketing leaders need to measure key metrics to determine if marketing tactics and strategies are working.

Sales Metrics

Source: Pixabay

Sales metrics are vital marketing KPIs that every business should track daily or weekly if possible. If you don't measure metrics, you cannot detect campaigns that are not delivering their intended results. By monitoring metrics regularly, you can improve your marketing strategy based on performance.

Sales metrics include:

  • Total Number of online orders each month (or year)
  • Average order value: this marketing metric is the marketing metrics marketing metric that measures the amount in each order.
  • Total Number of marketing leads generated per month (or year)
  • Total Number of marketing contacts added to the marketing contact list
  • Total marketing expenses: this metric marketing metric is crucial because it allows you to monitor any budget overspending which, if not checked, could lead to financial insolvency.
  • Lifetime Customer Value: lifetime marketing metrics marketing metric analyzes the total marketing costs, minus marketing expenses, divided by the number of existing customers. This metric reveals how much you'll generate from each customer over their lifetime within your marketing activities.
  • Sales Close Rate: this metric is calculated by dividing the number of new sales that were closed in a marketing period by marketing leads generated over the same marketing period. This marketing metric gives you an idea of how well each marketing lead was nurtured to close the sale, and what sales conversion rate your business can expect from marketing leads.

Email Marketing Metrics

Email marketing is a marketing channel you can use to reach out and connect with your target audience through their inboxes. One of the most important metrics you should monitor is open rates because it shows how relevant they think your marketing materials are, which will determine whether they'll engage with you in the future.

There are marketing metrics that you can measure for every email marketing segment, which include:

  • Total Number of emails sent and received per day, week, or month.
  • Open Rates: the marketing metric is the percentage of people who open the marketing email.
  • Click through rates: CTR measures how many people clicked on a link, image, or CTA in your email. It shows you how engaged your audience is
  • Unsubscribe rate: this marketing metric measures subscribers' willingness to unsubscribe from receiving marketing emails from your campaigns.
  • Bounce rates: marketing bounce rate is the use of email marketing to send marketing information to a list of people who have agreed to receive it in exchange for a free prize or gift, although they are not interested in your marketing message or products. You can measure this marketing metric by looking at how many bounced.
  • Email campaigns: bulk marketing automation isused to reach out to targeted contacts based on demographic data such as age group, gender.
  • Delivery rates: campaigns can be measured by their delivery rate because it aims to measure how many marketing messages were delivered successfully to a marketing segment based on marketing segments.
  • Bounce rate: this marketing metric is another sign of the overall performance of your email marketing campaign. Bounce rates show the percentage of marketing emails that bounced because the recipient's address was invalid or no longer exists. A higher bounce rate could show a marketing channel that needs to be updated.
  • Click-through rates: unlike open rates, click-through rates measure any marketing segment's engagement with your marketing messages when they are actually delivered in their inboxes.

Paid Advertising Metrics

Source: Pixabay

While organic search traffic is superb, it takes a while to gather steam. That’s where paid advertising methods like pay per click come in because they bring results faster.

Paid marketing includes all marketing that involves the use of paid advertising (which can be both online and offline marketing). 

Paid advertising metrics for your ads include:

Clicks:

The number of times your ad was clicked on. If you only want people to click through to your landing page but not make a purchase right then, you can use a 'CPC' or cost per click marketing model. This lets you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. You should also monitor other marketing metrics, such as the number of times they showed your ads, impressions (how many people saw it), and CTR (Click Through Rate which is how often people actually clicked on an ad).

Click Through Rate (CTR):

The rate at which people click your ads. You can monitor this by comparing the number of impressions with the number of clicks you received. This lets you see if more people are clicking through to your site or not. For example, an ad that receives 10,000 impressions and 50 clicks would have a click-through rate of 5%.

Target CPA:

Your marketing campaign's cost per acquisition. This is the amount you are willing to pay for a visitor or customer. You should constantly adjust your marketing budget and bids to achieve this number. Look at both ROI (return on investment) and how much profit you're making per marketing dollar spent.

Cost Per Click (CPC):

CPC is the amount you pay every time a user clicks your Google ad. Your cost per click is the maximum amount you’re charged for a click on your ad.

ROAS:

ROAS means the return on ad spend. It’s a digital marketing metric that measures the amount of revenue earned for every dollar spent on advertising.

Social Media Metrics

Source: Pixabay

Social media marketing (SMM) is a marketing technique that uses social networks for marketing, which helps you build campaigns that are effective and engaging. It's important to measure all your marketing KPIs for each social media network platform so you can see how well they're performing. This will also help when it comes time to create new marketing strategies.

To measure these marketing metrics, you'll want to keep track of how many followers you have for each social marketing platform, how often you post content to your profiles, and the number of times people viewed your content daily.

Social marketing analytics include:

  • Total Number of followers on each network site (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram)
  • Total Number of posts per week or month for each social marketing platform.
  • Total Number of new followers per day, week, or month.
  • Engagement rate: this marketing metric measures the marketing campaign's overall performance by breaking down the number of new followers into those who followed you and also how many are actively engaging with your posts. Engagement could be comments or likes on any post.
  • Audience Growth Rate: the marketing objective is to increase your marketing audience, and this marketing KPI will help you measure success by looking at the amount of new followers month-over-month. The marketing strategy aims to help you grow your social presence on each marketing platform.
  • Post Reach: post reach marketing metric allows you to measure how many marketing posts are being viewed by people within that marketing campaign.
  • Unique post views: this marketing KPI will tell the digital marketing team and the marketing manager or marketing leader how many people on each social media network have actually viewed an individual post or marketing content posted. It's important to note that marketing content might be social media posts, blog posts, or videos.
  • Potential reach: means the total number of people who could see a post during a specific period. It shows you if a certain social media channel is worth your time and financial investment.
  • Engagement rate: this metric shows you the numbers of how people are interacting with your social media content.

Another digital marketing metric to measure is landing pages conversion rate since you take social media traffic to a landing page. 

When you're measuring digital marketing campaigns, you want to see how well your marketing team is doing in terms of lead generation for sales. This is the most important marketing KPI because as a marketing leader, you're marketing to grow sales revenue and achieve marketing goals.

For marketing metrics that measure lead generation, it's important to measure the digital marketing conversion rate for your campaigns. You'll want to make sure that campaigns generating leads so you can put a budget behind them and have the appropriate number of marketing resources working on the campaign.

Measure The Success Marketing And Optimize For Growth

Digital marketing tools have made measuring digital marketing success simple.

You can scrutinize your digital marketing strategy meticulously.

Analyzing your digital marketing numbers.

Last Updated on August 18, 2023 by Hanson Cheng

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Hanson Cheng

About the author

Living in Portugal with my wife and puppies.
Scaling online businesses and sharing lessons learned on this website and in our email newsletter.

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