Are You Paying Attention to These Online Marketing KPIs?

Data: the double-edged sword of digital marketing.

With nearly everything being quantified and tracked, online marketers have access to more information than ever before. Many times, this can lead to a case of too much of a good thing being a bad thing. With so much data available, it can be difficult to determine what is actually useful.

That’s where Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, come in. By tracking the right KPIs, you will gain meaningful insights about your business without drowning in analytics. Here are a few digital marketing KPIs you need to be paying attention to…

Website Visitors

Your website is (or at least, should be) one of your primary marketing channels. There is a nearly unlimited amount of website data available, but these three metrics are among the most useful:

• Traffic Sources: How are visitors getting to your website? Are they finding you through organic search, a pay per click campaign, social media, referrals, or something else? Figuring out your primary traffic sources can help you better allocate your online marketing budget and identify areas for improvement.
• Exit Pages: Exit pages are the last page a user visits before leaving your website. Once you identify your top exit pages, you can examine them to see why so many users are leaving. This can also help you discover bigger underlying issues. For example, a high exit rate during the checkout process could indicate a payment processing problem that is causing you to lose revenue.
• New vs. Return Visitors: Gaining new customers is always great, but the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. This is why maintaining long-lasting customer relationships is so important for businesses. By tracking your new vs. returning visitors data, you can ensure you are bringing in a healthy mix of both types of customers.

Pay Per Click Campaigns

Paid search, or PPC, campaigns are a staple in any digital marketing plan. Go beyond the simple “cost per click” analytic and get meaningful insights with these three KPIs:

• Cost Per Conversion: Sure, cost per click is a great metric, but what good are those clicks if they don’t amount to a tangible action? Tracking cost per conversion is a better way to measure the effectiveness of your PPC campaign and landing pages. What constitutes a “conversion” can be customized depending on your business goals. Some examples of conversions include form submissions, phone calls, downloads, or purchases.
• Impression Share: Your impression share is the percentage of impressions your ads actually receive, compared to the total number of impressions they could potentially receive. A low impression share could indicate that you need to boost your overall budget, improve ad relevance, or increase your bid amount.
• Click-Through Rate: Click-through rate measures how often people who see your ad actually click on it. The higher the click-through rate, the better. Analyzing which ads have the highest click-through rates can help you identify common trends and optimize your campaign as a whole.

Social Media

Are you having trouble determining the value and overall effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign? These three metrics can give you insights that your follower count cannot:

• Shares: Likes are good, but shares are great. When a user shares your post, they are making an active decision to promote your brand and put your content in front of their friends and followers – it’s pretty much free press.
• Comment Sentiment: One hundred comments on a social media post can paint two very different pictures depending on their sentiment. Keeping tabs on positive vs. negative comments and reviews can give you a general idea of how your customer base as a whole perceives your business; for every comment that gets posted, chances are at least two other people share that opinion.
• Inbound Links: Inbound links, or links back to your company website, are a key component of any good SEO strategy. The more quality inbound links you have, the better your chances of ranking higher in search engines. Your social media pages provide a great opportunity to produce more inbound links for your website.

Are you having trouble finding the value in your online marketing campaign? Ferocious Media helps businesses across the country find and reach new customers through our digital marketing solutions. Visit our website learn more.