Let’s start the business focus by making 2018 the year of digital marketing success.Marketing is a key component for many businesses’ growth. In fact, the average digital marketing spend for businesses in the USA, is predicted to reach $118 billion (£91.4 billion) by 2021.
For anyone trying to take their marketing efforts to the next level, measurement is the first step to gaining accurate information and better understanding – and should lead to improvement. With the right goals in place, you can analyse how each digital marketing campaign is performing, gain valuable insights and define success. This data can inform you how consumers are interacting with your marketing campaigns and establish which ideas you should replicate and which you should consider improving.
With a digital agency directory you can find all the businesses you need in this market, as you need to study the managing of it. By understanding and identifying the level of your marketing performance and the level of return on investment (ROI) received, you can direct your 2018 marketing budget towards the most effective campaigns. You are then able to demonstrate whether your marketing efforts are (or are not) a powerful and worthwhile investment.
Here are the top three most crucial goals to measure this year:
Whether you’re looking to promote a new product or service, often the primary goal of your marketing efforts is visibility. Your ROI is the number of new potential customers who become aware of your brand through your campaigns.
Many website and social media analytics tools are free, including Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google AdWords Reporting, as well as insight tools which are available from Twitter and Facebook. The website in the example above is using Google Analytics to track new visitors and traffic: you can see the numbers of new visitors to the site. The total number of users was 1,260 of which 1,160 were new users, an increase of 84.3% of new visitors in that particular month. The website will include a variety of actions new and returning visitors can complete to interact with the business, such as phone calls, forms submissions, downloads (PDFs) and purchases. Using this tool, you have a deeper insight into how your marketing campaigns have drawn users to your website and the user journey.
You’ll also want to measure the popularity of your content. Some of your marketing efforts may be more popular than others and it’s important to know which is which. Generating more engagement means you’re selecting good topics, covering them properly and, most importantly, keeping your content highly relevant to your specific target audience.
The example above, from Facebook Insights, shows how ‘post reach’ and overall ‘engagement’ has increased. ‘Reach’ signifies how well your brand or product is appearing on multiple users’ newsfeeds, while ‘engagement’ represents clicks, likes, comments and shares. It’s important to know that the reach performance doesn’t always lead to high engagement. If someone has seen your post it doesn’t automatically indicate an intent to purchase or a customer relationship, it’s about how they interact. Comments, interactions, likes, tweets, shares, downloads, in-bound links and discussions are all various forms of engagement you can look at to tell you how well your campaign is doing.
Many analytic tools will allow you to monitor your website(s) and analyse a huge amount of data at individual page level. By tracking user engagement, you are able to identify the time spent on a page and the bounce rate (visitors leaving from the first page they visit without exploring further) to understand a visitor’s interest: the above example shows the bounce rate for this particular landing page. You can also see the time spent on this page and the average duration per visit. Using this information, you are able to understand better how users are interacting with individual pages. It’s important to understand the popularity of your campaigns to help you improve your marketing efforts.
Measuring your total conversions is one of the most important goals for determining the profitability of your overall marketing efforts. Google Analytics is an excellent tool which enables you to measure how effectively your website aids conversions. A conversion can be defined in many ways, i.e. phone calls, booking an appointment, filling out an enquiry form or making a transaction. By setting up ‘goal tracking’ you are able to analyse what’s working well and which marketing campaigns are generating the most conversions. The conversion rate is one of the most important indicators of whether or not your efforts are successful.
The website in the example above has set up three goals – brochure requests, recruitment requests and visit request: these goals have been tailored to the business needs and objectives of the company concerned. By setting up goal tracking they have discovered the conversion rate for each request. The visit request appears to be much lower than the other two goals. Which could mean that the content needs to be looked at, such as reviewing calls to action, improving landing page or ad copy. The business can use this data to understand user interaction and which marketing campaigns have led to an increase in conversions and, ultimately, revenue.
Tracking online interactions yourself is easy, but don’t forget to track your interactions offline as well. 75% of consumers still regard the telephone as the quickest response method and conversations may be the reason for increased conversions. Call tracking providers like Mediahawk allow businesses to measure the number of telephone calls their campaigns generate and how much revenue those calls contribute to the business by adding dynamic tracked phone numbers to your marketing efforts. Whether you’re running pay per click (PPC) campaigns, email newsletters or social media posts, call tracking helps determine which channels are driving the highest ROI. This way you can make strategic decisions regarding improving under-performing campaigns and re-allocating budget into more successful ones.
Once you have your goals in place, ensure you measure these goals consistently. It’s common for businesses to neglect and miss consumer behavioural patterns if goals are not regularly and effectively measured. Consistency is critical when measuring data, whether that’s monthly, fortnightly or whatever you decide. This will help give your business more valuable insights and conclusions to allow the marketing budget to be allocated in a more strategic manner this year.
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Natalia Selby is the marketing co-ordinator at Mediahawk. With more than 10 years of experience in analytics, content management and e-commerce, she helps businesses get the most from their online marketing.
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