Today’s business owners expect marketing to not only increase brand awareness but also the bottom line…with numbers to prove it. However, if you’re not measuring the right metrics, you will never be sure if you are delivering on those expectations.
Since you’ve defined your buyer personas and implemented a content marketing plan for each of them, now it’s time to see if your efforts are paying off! In order to do this, you need to be reviewing and optimizing your marketing consistently. In this post, we will teach you how to measure your marketing success with metrics.
What are Marketing Metrics?
Marketing metrics are measurable values used by marketing teams to help understand the impact and value of their marketing efforts across all of their digital channels. This includes the website, blog, and social media. Examples of important metrics, specifically key performance indicators (KPI) that analyze your success, would be metrics like unique website visitors, and Facebook post impressions.
7 Most Common Marketing Performance Metrics
You might be thinking, isn’t sales revenue (i.e. MONEY) my most important performance metric?
Not so fast.
There are many marketing metrics you can track, but when it comes to doing business online and making the most impact, there are a few things you should focus on that ultimately lead to more revenue.
Here they are:
Leads
Lead generation could be the most important indicator of success. Many marketers agree – in fact, according to HubSpot, lead generation is the top priority for 63% of marketers.
This measure tells you if your business ultimately has the ability to make sales and generate revenue. Of course, there is more work to be done in your sales funnel after you attract a lead, but this is a great place to start.
Cost Per Lead
When you start spending money on marketing campaigns geared toward bringing in leads, in order to calculate your return on investment, you will need to know your cost per lead. To figure this out, divide the total cost you spent on your marketing campaign (like Facebook or Google Ads) by the total number of leads it generates. Obviously, the lower the cost, the higher your profit margin.
ROI (Return on Investment)
In order to consider your marketing campaign successful, ultimately you need to bring in more money than you spent. You can calculate your profit simply by taking your sales revenue from a particular campaign and subtracting what you spent on marketing it.
TIP: To get an idea of your most successful buyer persona, break down your sales by your targeted personas. This way you can get a better idea of who to focus on with your next campaign.
Referral traffic
Referral traffic means the number of people landing on your website or sales page from another source. Typically in the online space, you will be looking at clicks to your website from your social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google ads, or other marketing channels, including backlinks from other websites.
Social media is a big part of referral traffic, and can easily be broken out as a separate metric. Social media drives a lot of traffic, so knowing those numbers behind your pages can only serve you when planning better campaigns. Luckily, most social media platforms have built-in analytics tools for you to easily track your followers, reach, engagement, and much more.
TIP: Pay attention to where you are getting the most referrals from so that when you run your next campaign, you know where to put the bulk of your efforts!
Website Traffic
Your overall website traffic means tracking the number of users visiting your website over a specific period of time. Google Analytics is the most common tool to measure this. This metric is a big indicator of whether or not your overall content marketing strategy is hitting home with your buyer personas.
TIP: Check out which pages are getting the MOST organic (non-paid) traffic and focus more of your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts on promoting it to amplify already popular pages.
Reviews
Reviews and testimonials are a no-brainer. In today’s online world, where buyers are purchasing online more than ever, you NEED to have good reviews in order to be successful!
Reviews increase customer trust and build credibility for you and your business.
TIP: Consider focusing on User Generated Content (UGC) in your marketing campaigns. In today’s market, buyers are relying on recommendations from everyday people in addition to (and sometimes more so) big-budget TV commercials that feature celebrities or popular influencers.
Subscriber Growth
One of our guiding principles at GreenCup Digital is that ignoring your email marketing list can be a dire mistake. Consider all the recent upheavals at Facebook and the sweeping changes that have followed. At the end of the day, Facebook owns their data and can do anything they want with it. Your email marketing list is yours to keep. If Facebook went away, you would still have a list of interested prospects to market your products.
Email subscriber growth continues to be a solid indicator of growth.
Understanding Your Results
When you review your performance you are basically looking at what works and what doesn’t. After you’ve analyzed your numbers, you should know:
- Which channels are producing the best results
- Who your strongest persona is in terms of ROI
- What strategies are working and are getting you the results you are looking for
- What strategies do NOT work and you can kick them to the curb
Measuring your marketing success with metrics is the best way to see if your efforts are paying off. When you track actual numbers, you will have solid data to make decisions about how you want to spend your time and marketing budget.
Need help figuring it all out? Contact the team at GreenCup Digital to get started!
