Online Marketing Tips: How Experts and Top Marketers Measure Their Digital Marketing Metrics

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It’s the end of the quarter and for B2B marketers everywhere it means one thing: analysing the online marketing activity from the last three months, measuring its lead generation success and proving the ROI value to the rest of the business. However with a sea of stats, analytics, dashboards and reports to wade through across all the different digital platforms, the question is where do you even start? And what digital metrics are really worth measuring?

It’s time to get rid of the misunderstanding and learn from the very best. Here are the top four digital marketing metrics the expert’s measure and why you should too:

1. Macro (overall) and Micro (campaign level) Conversions Percentage

Avinash Kaushik

“Focus on measuring your macro (overall) conversions, but for optimal awesomeness, identify and measure your micro conversions as well” – Avinash Kaushik

What does it mean: Don’t forget your strategic goals when you’re planning your campaign activity. You need to constantly question whether the smaller KPI’s and metrics (micro conversions) are going to achieve the wider business goals (macro conversions) you have set before.

2. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

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“Cost per acquisition (CPA) is a critical metric for paid marketing channels where the costs scale linearly (or super-linearly) with conversions…If your CPA is too high you can reduce bids, increase conversion rates or increase customer spend” – Will Critchlow

What does it mean: With paid advertising activity, in particular, you have two ‘levers’ you can pull: your message and your bids. Keeping a close eye on cost metrics further through the funnel will make sure you don’t end up with lots of top-of-funnel vanity traffic, but negative ROI at the bottom.

3. The Percentage of Conversion Rates at Every Stage of the Funnel

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“Conversion funnel metrics (knowing the percent of potential customers make it through each step of a given conversion process, and which channels or behaviours predict that they’ll make it further)” – Rand Fishkin

What does it mean: If you want to generate the best return possible, you’re going to have to understand how your conversion at each stage of the sales funnel affects your ROI. Forecast conversion performance BEFORE you invest another penny in online marketing activity and you won’t be caught out further along the line.

4. Increase the Percentage in Channel ROI

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“When you’re talking to executives or CFOs, it’s my personal opinion that executives always want to see the money first. So focus on financials, conversion rates, number of sales, number of leads. They don’t want to go through the marketing first and then get to the numbers. Just give them what they want” – Ed Reese

What does it mean: 47% of B2B Marketers say their biggest challenge is ‘demonstrating importance’ of their activity to the wider business. Your digital marketing metrics need to translate into meaningful business outcomes for senior management, and that means proving it’s ROI. If your digital campaigns are successful lead generators, then shout about it.

Conclusion

When it comes to your digital marketing metrics, you’re swimming in a sea of data. However, if you struggle that overwhelming insight into accurate analysis throughout the whole sales funnel and translate your successes into meaningful business outcomes, you will be well set for anything the next three months.