You’ve been hitting the gym for a few months now, opting for salad at lunch, and trading in that six pack from the corner store so you can regain the six pack from your youth, but how do you know it’s all working? Easy…you measure it, right? The number on the scale is lower, your belt is looser, and the waist size of your pants is decreasing. Your efforts are effectively working toward your ultimate goal — congrats you fit and healthy person, you!
Now, take that example and apply it to your digital marketing efforts. Just as results from diet and exercise can be measured for success, so too can your digital marketing’s performance. You just need to know what metrics to measure in order to determine if your efforts are achieving your business objectives and maximizing ROI. Sure, what you measure will vary depending on your goals, but there are certain metrics you should definitely be looking at to help you see if your marketing is working as well as your diet:
Traffic Source
Where are your visitors coming from before landing on your website? Not only does this data help you know whether your message is targeting the right audience, but it can also indicate how recognizable your brand is in your targeted locations as well as how strong your keywords are and if you’re getting a good number of referrals.
Average Session Duration
How long visitors stay on your site is a good indication of whether you are providing relevant content potential customers find valuable. Besides, the longer they stick around, the more likely they are to transition from potential customer to a paying one!
Bounce Rate
This represents visitors to your site who land on a single page then bail right away, without doing anything further. It can happen for a few different reasons, including visitors not being from the right audience, or your site not providing relevant content. It can also indicate your landing pages and forms may need some optimization to yield better conversions. You want this number to be low.
Exit Pages
The last page customers look at before they leave can help you to determine exactly why they left, which is good information to know! It usually tells you if certain pages could use a little TLC to perform better, but there’s a flip side, too. If the last page visited was your contact page, for instance, and they filled out your contact form, that’s a good thing!
Interactions Per Visit
What visitors do on your site is invaluable knowledge! The pages they are visiting, how long they are staying, and what actions they are taking — like filling out forms, downloading content, or subscribing to newsletters— are all excellent indicators of where they are in the buyer’s journey, allowing you to more easily nurture them into conversions.
New Visitor Conversions
The number of new visitors that come to your site is a good reflection of how well you are doing in search and brand recognition. How many of these new visitors actually convert gives you even greater insight into the user experience of your site, as well as what types of efforts are working to make first-time visitors want to be customers.
Return Visitor Conversion
If visitors come back to your site, go ahead and pat yourself on the back! This is good news as it means they’re either converted customers now loyal to your brand or, if they didn’t convert the first go around, you made enough of an impression that they are still considering you, giving you another chance to seal the deal. You definitely want this number to increase.
Cost Per Conversion
This is a biggy! Obviously, even if you have a high overall conversion rate, if your costs to obtain it are so high that your net income is a wash or worse, negative, you need to pull back on the reins a bit. Increasing conversions should be a goal, but not at the sacrifice of your margins.
Whew! That’s a lot to take in all at once, we know, but it gives you plenty to munch on along with your veggies, and think about while you’re at the gym. Of course, it’s hard enough to fit exercise into your busy schedule much less measuring a bunch of metrics, but that’s when outsourcing comes in handy.
Give us a call and get the help you need to keep your website — and your fitness routine— on track. After all, perhaps the most important metric you can measure is life/work ratio.
