Before we dive into the process of measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing, we should first look at how you can prepare your campaigns to succeed. There are three factors you should take into consideration to be able to efficiently and accurately evaluate your campaigns:
-Set goals that are SMART
-Know the vanity metrics
-Set up Google Analytics
Let’s look into each one of these further below
1.Set Goals that are SMART
You cannot measure success in marketing without having objectives first. If you don’t understand the goals you’re working towards, then you’ll be unable to evaluate your campaign’s effectiveness and effectiveness accurately. To accurately gauge the performance of your campaign, set SMART goals.
It stands for:
- Specific The goals you set should be clear on the goals you’re trying to reach.
- Measurable The plan should allow you to be in a position to determine whether you’ve succeeded in achieving your goals.
- Attained: You should be able to fulfil your objectives.
- Practical: Your goals should be feasible and pertinent to your company’s needs.
- The time is of the essence: You should have a deadline for achieving your target.
SMART goals are the best for digital marketing since they allow you to set specific goals to analyse indicators and see whether you accomplished what you intended to achieve. If you have a general objective such as “Earn more leads,” it’s difficult to determine whether you’ve met that target. What is the number of leads that are “more?” How soon do you need to start earning these leads?
What is the best way to gauge the goals? If you have a plan that is so general, it’s challenging to examine the analytics in the field of digital marketing and determine whether you’re achieving the target. On the other hand, SMART goals make it simple to look at your digital marketing statistics and assess whether you’re meeting the objectives you’d like to achieve.
A goal such as “Increase sales by 25% for Q1” is simple to monitor and track to see if you’ve reached the goal.
2.Be aware of vanity metrics.
Looking at the digital marketing metrics, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of numbers you can use to help your business. Before you can begin measuring marketing results, you must be aware of the vanity measures. They are measures that look nice but aren’t relevant to your business’s success in digital marketing.
In the end, these numbers do not provide any evidence that your marketing efforts are working. Examples of vanity metrics are:
- Followers
- Pageviews
- Subscribers
- Total of customers’ transactions
For instance, if you follow your social media users and see that you have a Facebook account with 5000 people following it, You might think that it’s an indicator of success for your social media strategy. But, are those 5000 people engaging on your page? Do they purchase your goods?
Following other people doesn’t mean you’ve met your objectives in generating leads or sales, and that’s why you should not use these measures to evaluate the overall effectiveness or return.
3.Set up Google Analytics
If you’re looking to evaluate your success in digital marketing, it is essential to install Google Analytics. Analytics is a Google product. Analytics allows you to keep all your data about your campaigns in one location and then analyse your performance. This is a simplified version of how to install Google Analytics:
- Create or sign-up using your Google account
- Create your home
- Build your property’s reporting view
- Include your Google Analytics tracking code on your site
For a more detailed description, refer to our blog article to set up Google Analytics for your business!Are you ready to evaluate the success of your digital marketing? Here are seven indicators you should be tracking to determine if you’re achieving the right results from your campaigns.
4.Source of traffic
If you’re interested in knowing the best way to measure digital marketing’s success, begin by analysing your traffic according to the source. This metric is available inside Google Analytics by going to:
This metric is crucial to keep track of because it shows your traffic sources. Google Analytics will tell you the start of your traffic, which includes places like:
- Direct
- Paid Search
- Display
- Affiliates
- Other
This measurement helps you understand the most important information regarding marketing campaign performance. You can determine which channels generate the highest traffic and leads that are most qualified for your company. This will help you make decisive decisions about your marketing. In the example above, when you look at your traffic sources, you might find that you’re getting a lot of results through the Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertisements.
In the end, you decide to increase your efforts and dedicate additional resources for PPC to boost conversion rates.
5.Returning visitors
If you are evaluating the success of your marketing, ensure that you track the number of returning visitors. Returning visitors are visitors who return to your website after visiting this site for the very first time. Returning visitors can be tracked using Google Analytics by going to:
You can also compare the number of visitors you’ve received versus returning visitors. This is an excellent measure of the quality of customer experience you offer. You’ll likely have more returning customers if you can provide a meaningful and enjoyable user experience.
This metric may indicate that:
- You have a functioning website that people are happy to browse
- You develop marketing campaigns that are specific to your target market
Returning visitors are essential for generating money for your company. When you track this number, you will be able to see the extent to which your digital marketing campaigns effectively bring customers back to your site to find out more about your company and to convert.
6.Average session duration
If you’re looking to learn how to gauge the success of your digital marketing, make sure to monitor your session duration average. Your average session duration is visitors’ duration on your site each time they visit. To determine the average duration of sessions for the marketing channel you use, you can go to the following link in Google Analytics:
Here, you can view the duration of sessions for every channel, from direct to paid search.
In general, you should get a better average session length since it means that visitors spend time on your website getting familiar with your company and the products or services you offer. If users spend longer time on your website, they are more likely to make a purchase. In addition, If you click on specific channels and look at each campaign, you will see the movements that keep visitors engaged for longer.
You can look at these campaigns to determine why people are spending more time on these websites and then apply your findings to help create new campaigns.
7.Exit rate
In evaluating the marketing results, ensure that you include the exit rate among your metrics for digital marketing. The exit rate tells you the frequency with which visitors leave the page after having viewed any quantity of your website. The exit rate can be found on Google Analytics by going to:
The exit rate will indicate areas where you’re not effective in digital marketing. If you have pages with an unusually high exit rate, it’s a sign something isn’t working for the page or campaign. Let’s say, for instance, you go through your pages and see that the product page has an unusually high rate of exit.
This could indicate that something isn’t available or there’s a problem with the “add to cart” button not working or similar and is making users experience a bad one. Be aware that an excessive leave rate naturally characterises certain pages. If you’ve got a page with a form to fill out such as this, you’re likely to experience an extremely high rate of exits since users complete the state and then quit.
Also, ensure that you consider how you intend to use your site before you attempt to improve it by optimising it.
8.Rate of bounce
When you evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing, be sure to monitor the bounce rates. Your bounce rate measures how many people leave your site without visiting other pages on your website. This metric is available on Google Analytics by going to:
While the bounce rate and the exit rate could appear to be the same measure, however, they’re pretty different.
Bounce rate is the number of people who leave the page that brought them to your website. In contrast, the exit rate is based on the last page a user has visited. A user could go to multiple pages before leaving. It is essential to look for websites with the highest bounce rate since it may indicate a bad user experience.
Your site may have high bounce rates because of:
- Your website is taking a far too long time to load
- Information that is irrelevant to the purpose of
- Website errors
9.Conversion rate
If you’re interested in knowing how to gauge the success of your digital marketing, remember that you cannot measure it without including the conversion rates among your metrics. Your conversion rate tells you how many people convert after using your website’s pages. The information about your conversion rate on Google Analytics by going to:
If you are tracking the conversion rate, bear in mind that it is possible to monitor different types of conversions.
It is possible to track conversions in the following ways:
- Sales
- Subscriptions
- Sign-ups
- Downloads
Monitoring this metric is crucial to determine whether your marketing campaigns produce the most effective outcomes for your company.
Read More: Digital Marketing – A guide to Marketing
