Measuring the results of your digital strategy is one of the most important factors in making it work. And it’s easy to see why. Because web marketing is an extremely responsive field, if we don’t keep an eye on the impact of our initiatives, we can easily miss out on big opportunities.
Fortunately, the way digital media is structured makes measuring the results of a digital strategy a simpler task. If we compare it with traditional channels such as TV and newspapers, for example, we quickly realize that none of them gives us the chance to understand user behavior the way the web does. But that doesn’t necessarily mean this measurement will be straightforward.
Often, relying only on the default tools the networks themselves provide can keep you far from seeing the real results of your online strategy. That’s why, over the years, countless tools have been created that people like you can use to gain a deep understanding of how your consumers behave (and what they’re looking for).
Today you’ll learn about some important metrics for evaluating investments, making decisions, and getting to know your audience better. You’ll also discover some software solutions that can help you along the way. Let’s get started?
What metrics should you use to measure the results of your digital strategy?
This first topic starts with a series of questions rather than an immediate answer. That’s because measuring the effectiveness of a digital strategy is never the same from one project to the next. What we mean is that every campaign you run online has its own particularities, and they should be respected when choosing the right metrics to track it.
Some campaigns are primarily aimed at increasing brand awareness, while others push consumers directly toward making a decision. In the first case, analyzing the impact and reach of your social media activities is the priority; in the second, you should focus on conversion metrics.
That’s why the first thing we should ask when measuring an online campaign is: what is its goal?
What do you intend to achieve with a particular ad? Why is it important to your business? How does it fulfill its role?
A landing page’s main goal is to generate conversions. Its job is to prompt users to make a decision and learn more about a product or service, taking a decisive step in the customer journey.
A display network campaign, on the other hand, may simply aim to make people aware that your brand exists. Or it may seek to address specific problems, driving readers to your blog and getting them to start discovering their problem.
See where we’re going with this? Evaluating investments, understanding your audience, and making decisions are only possible when you have the right metrics. We’ll talk about some of them below. Check it out!
What are the main metrics out there?
Today, the main metrics that marketing professionals evaluate day to day can be grouped into three different sets. Specifically, we’re talking about traffic, conversion, and revenue metrics.
In general, every campaign needs to be prepared to evaluate all three aspects simultaneously, because they feed into one another. Without generating traffic, there can’t be a significant number of conversions, and without conversions, your business’s revenue may suffer.
So there are a few ways to measure the effectiveness of each of these areas. When it comes to traffic, for example, the most common way to evaluate a business’s performance is to understand how many visits it’s adding to its portfolio within a given period.
However, there are other points to analyze: traffic sources, how many users access your content on mobile devices, cost per click for acquisition, the click-through rate of a given piece of content, among others.
When it comes to conversions, the ideal is usually to look at the gross conversion rate. It’s enough to tell us how many people went from visitors to consumers.
But for a more in-depth analysis of your campaigns, it’s best to also include cost per lead, the bounce rate of your page visitors, how much content they consume per visit, and how often they return to your website.
When the topic is revenue metrics, things can almost always be analyzed through ROI — or return on investment. This metric is enough to understand how much your company spent to achieve X amount of revenue.
That said, you can gain a lot of insight by also analyzing factors such as acquisition cost. This measure determines how much of your ROI was needed to attract a single customer and helps you optimize campaigns over time. Lowering acquisition cost makes your marketing department outstanding.
But there’s much more that can be analyzed within a marketing campaign to measure its efficiency. Imagine, for example, that your campaign’s landing page features a CTA button and, at the same time, contact options.
Understanding which of these options your users prefer can help you achieve more impressive results in the future. That’s why knowing the tools capable of measuring these particularities is essential.
What digital strategy analysis tools are available?
It’s safe to say we won’t be able to cover every digital strategy analysis tool out there. But we can look at some of them that will make all the difference in how your business acquires and retains customers.
Today, you’ll find software on the market that can track and parameterize the interactions your consumers have with the pages of your website. And, in some cases, others that go well beyond that.
Solutions that can measure customer interaction levels in your store, for example, are increasingly common. And they can truly revolutionize your marketing, because they bring information once restricted to the digital world into offline life.
Consider, for example, that there are tools out there that act as watchdogs for your content. They check how much time a user spends on a given page, which buttons they click, and what kind of content catches their attention most.
Alternatives like these can transform the way your company looks at data and deliver comprehensive reports on your users’ behavior and desires, helping you optimize your decision-making and providing real interaction data.
Want to learn how to measure the results of your digital strategy like an expert? Get in touch with Alice Wonders and discover our solutions.
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