Measuring digital marketing success
Often, when a company first starts thinking about digital marketing, they rush to thinking about what target audience they serve and what tactics they should use (SEO, PPC, Social Media, Content marketing, etc.) Ironically, starting off this way can make it very hard to know which tactic they should use. They can end up spending too much money and spinning their wheels on things that don’t really serve them.
What should you measure?
But eventually, the right questions always come up. “What are we trying to accomplish? How will we know if we’re successful?” My response is always, “Exactly! How do you know if you’re successful if you aren’t tracking it?”
The next question is usually, “what should you be tracking?” The answer is usually pretty simple. Start by asking; what’s most important to me and my website? What are the major goals? Is it sales? Or increased traffic? Is it a download? A phone call? Signing up for a newsletter? Whatever it is, that is the place you start!
Once you know what the goals are, it’s easier to identify the right tactics and set up the tracking to measure the success of those tactics. For example, if the main goal for your website is sales, then you’ll want to set up the tracking of all your marketing outreach from first click all the way through to a sale. Only then will you know if your marketing is working to get the right customer and if your messaging and landing pages are effective.
How do you track your metrics?
Using Google Analytics is a great way to get started and of course you can’t beat the price (free!). Once you’ve got it set up and start diving into its more complex functions, you’ll find that it can do a lot and it’s easy to get lost in all the data. Once again, this is where you want to go back to your main goals and focus on the goals that are most important to your company. Set up your dashboards to have those metrics up top. Things like numbers of site visitors per day, clicks to the shopping cart, how many visitors abandoned the shopping cart, and how many sales occurred would be good starting metrics to have in your Google Analytics dashboard.
When you start reviewing these metrics regularly, you’ll start to see patterns and be able to identify where your site may not be performing as you need it to. That’s where the real value of measuring your site success shows up. From there you can make changes and fine tune your site and your marketing campaigns to get better results and of course, increase those sales!
So, sit down today and write up the goals for your website and start thinking about what metrics will show success toward those goals. Then head over to your Google Analytics account and set up those dashboards! And of course, if you’d like help with your digital marketing campaigns or the measurement and fine tuning of them, give us a call. Clear Blue Sky Digital has 24 years of experience helping companies succeed online. We’d love to help you too!
