The thing with digital marketing is that everything is measurable.
Website visitors, pages per visit, dwell time, social media followers, reach, engagement. It’s all there - but is it useful and do you know what you’re looking for?
If you’re measuring the effectiveness of your digital strategy, then it is, of course, important to be measuring the activities that align to the goals you’re aiming for. Are you hoping for brand profile? Drive enquiries? To build new revenue streams from digitised products? To grow sales of your core services? Whatever it is, make sure you know what figures will provide the evidence you need.
Some of the metrics beloved of marketers are slightly misleading. Quite a few are just measures of activity: your web team posting lots of messages on social media that are specifically designed to get a reaction. ‘Engagement levels are really high, boss’, they’ll tell you as you look at sales figures which have not moved a jot.
So what should you usefully measure? What can those numbers actually mean? See which of these are in your weekly reports:
Total website visits
If your digital marketing is aiming to drive people to your site to make purchases or enquiries, then web visits is a key metric that should give you a rough idea of how effective your campaigns are. Obviously, you want this number to grow steadily over time. There may be some regular drop-offs in monthly figures - February is a shorter month, the Christmas holidays may have an impact - but if it’s not shifting or if the numbers are dropping then it’s time to take a hard look at your marketing channels to identify the problem.
Traffic by referrals
Which of your marketing efforts is driving traffic in the most effective way?
The sources of that traffic will give you a clue:
- Direct visitors: They know your url. They already know you - your brand has already resonated.
- Search: Driven by your SEO strategy
- Inbound links: Sent you by other sites. Inbound links should be part of your SEO and your PR strategies
- Social media: Your social presence should be targeted at driving traffic (and customers), or what’s the point?
But don’t look at these numbers without thinking about the impact: are the social media referrals likely to be serious customers? Does your SEO work land visitors on the best page? Which of those referrals gives the best conversions into actual customers?
New or returning visitors
If users are returning to your site - then you’re giving good content, and users are responding to your social media or newsletter work. If you have more new visitors, then perhaps your sales funnel is working. Both numbers can be good, but know which you need more. Measure too how many of each (new/returning) actually spend money with you - and the value of that spend.
Pages per visit/Dwell time
It used to be that people wanted a high number of pages per visit, but the trend has been to more efficient user journeys in a sales funnel - three pages before you want them to be whipping out the credit card.
So high numbers of pages viewed per visit may be inefficient and may also be a sign of a confusing website and that users can’t find what they are looking for. Similarly, dwell time (minutes per visit) might be symbolic of confusion or of fascinating content. It depends what you want your site to do - to engage or to sell.
Bounce rate
If you have a great blog article which keeps topping the Google searches, then you might expect a high bounce rate, as people come for that content and then pop off. That might still be good for Google, and how Google perceives your relevance. So for certain pages, it might be fine to have a high bounce rate.
But if people are leaving after visiting one page, the chances are they aren’t buying, and you need at least some of your audience to do that. In sales terms, a high bounce rate is a sign that you’re attracting the wrong visitors (badly targeted campaigns or social media), or the pages you are sending them to aren’t doing their job. And if users are leaving after two or three pages, is there a consistency to their exit point? What’s turning them off?
Mobile v desktop
You want to be increasing the percentage of visitors who are coming to you via mobile. It’s the direction of travel of the market, and it’s where Google already is (so you better be).
Cost per visitor and revenue per visitor
This is one for the accountant. How much of your spending goes on digital and how many visitors does that attract, and, ultimately, how much revenue? Of course, this is only useful if you have comparable figures for other activities - how much on events, on printed materials and networking and so on, so that you can compare the effectiveness of on and off-line channels. Measuring the conversion rate of all this activity is, in the end, the core of all this.
Click-through rates
If you’re running social or search advertising, then measure the click-through rates and the conversion of those customers. Just a simple ‘it it worth it?’ test.
So if your digital work is designed to grow your revenues, as we would assume it to be, then these are all ways of making sure that you have a sales funnel that attracts and retains customers and maximises their spend. Which sounds simple, but if you’re going to get the channel mix right, you need to always be measuring the ingredients.
