What Are Digital Marketing Metrics & Why You Should Track Them
Digital marketing metrics are key performance indicators (KPIs) that tell marketing teams how well their marketing campaigns perform. Tracking and measuring results can be challenging since marketers use many tools to promote and advertise content, products, and services.
However, things become more manageable if they have a set of digital marketing metrics for tracking and analysing purposes.
How so? They can determine their targets and goals with set KPIs that work for them, and they can also measure the performance of their campaigns based on the KPI values.
Thus, digital marketing KPIs are important because marketers can see what works well in their campaigns. They can also track what doesn’t work and what needs to be changed or improved.
Metrics help marketers focus their time and investment on what needs attention rather than trying to guess what’s working versus what isn’t.
13 Digital Marketing Metrics to Start Tracking Today
While we’re diving into a comprehensive list of the digital marketing KPIs you can track for your campaigns, the best metrics for you depend on your business and your goals. That being said, KPIs should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
Here are some helpful marketing indicators you can track:
Overall Web Traffic
Measuring your web traffic shows you the total number of visitors who engaged with your content or visited your website. Looking at the source or medium, you can also see where the traffic comes from. This metric is crucial if you want to have a bird’s eye view of your total traffic. You can look for patterns that you can use to give you a competitive edge.
Total Conversions
A conversion is when a visitor takes a desired action on your website or social page. For example, it could be becoming a paying customer and clicking “buy,” or giving you their personal information (in exchange for downloading a lead magnet or short ebook).
If your visitors aren’t converting, you need to test and see what isn’t working. Is it your design? Are the offers too vague or not attention-grabbing enough? Does your visitor know what action they need to take next?
Channel-Specific Traffic
This KPI lets you know which channel your visitors came from before they visited your site. Think of it like this: you have many doorways leading people to your site.
They can arrive from one of your social media platforms and have clicked on a link that takes them to your website. In this case, they came through a social door. Or they could have directly typed your URL into the search bar on their browser (a direct door).
Your visitors could also have searched on Google and, from the search results, landed on your site (an organic door). Or they followed a link on another site or domain (a referral door).
Understanding your traffic through marketing channels helps you see which channels drive the most traffic, allowing you to know where to focus your marketing efforts.
Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate indicates how many visitors left your website without any engagement. A high bounce rate points to irrelevant content, a page that loads too slowly, and other problems. However, it can also tell you that a visitor quickly got the information they needed and left the page. If the bounce rate is high, you know that you need to do some A/B testing for improvement.
Brand Sentiment
Brand sentiment tells you what people are saying about your company. While this isn’t a formal digital marketing metric, you can set up a Google Alert to notify you when there’s mention of your brand somewhere online. This helps you respond in time and deal with any negative publicity promptly. Positive brand mentions also speak to marketing success.
Exit Rate
This KPI is useful if you have multiple touchpoints or a multi-page conversion process. When you look at your site or page’s exit rate, you gather information about when and where people are leaving the conversion funnel.
Consider on-page and engagement metrics together with the exit rate. This helps you make an informed decision about your calls to action and how you can optimise your site or landing pages.
Engagement Rate
How you measure the engagement rate depends on the platform. On social media platforms, engagement is measured by tallying up the shares, likes, and comments.
On your website, look at page depth, bounce rate, and session duration to evaluate your content's engagement. Conversion metrics will help you determine if your content or campaigns are working as well as you would like them to.
Email Open Rate
The open email rate measures how many people open your email campaign and receive the email. If your email open rate is high, you have an attention-grabbing subject line, the send time is appropriate, and you have a well-segmented email list.
A low email open rate means you must consider the three factors above and make some adjustments.
Click-Through Rate
Your click-through rate, or CTR, shows how many visitors have clicked on your ad. The CTR metric indicates how well your keywords, free product listing, and digital ads perform.
If your CTR is high, searchers find your listings and ads relevant and useful.
Cost-per-Click
Cost-per-click (CPC) is a metric that specifies how much you pay for every click on your ad. There are ways you can decrease your CPC. For example, you can boost your Quality Score, which can get you a discount.
Your CPC dictates how long your marketing budget will last, so the lower your CPC, the more you can stretch your ad budget.
Cost per Lead
The cost per lead (CPL) is similar to CPC. However, it tells you how much you pay for every lead generated through your digital marketing campaign.
Your CPL metric reveals how successful and effective your campaigns are in terms of generating new leads. This also helps you understand your overall return on investment (ROI).
Customer Acquisition Cost
Your cost per acquisition (CPA) refers to how much you pay to generate a customer. Leads and customers are different. An individual becomes a customer further down your sales funnel than when they purchase something from you. Leads become customers when you buy something. So, your CPA costs include sales visits, advertising, and anything else you need to do to turn a visitor into a paying customer. If you’ve spent a lot of money and only converted 3-4 leads into customers, you haven’t added anything to your bottom line. Thus, your CPA gives you a big-picture view of your whole campaign and its success.
Return on Investment
A metric every marketer uses, your ROI demonstrates whether or not you are getting your money’s worth. To measure your ROI metric, you should look at a few conversion KPIs for a better picture. Look at your overall conversion rate, the cost per acquisition, the CPL, and more to see your ROI for every campaign.
What NOT to Track
With all of these metrics, you may wonder what you should not be tracking to measure the success of your digital marketing campaigns. You can make use of every single one of these metrics, but there is a key question you need to ask:
Does the metric have any value for you?
You are wasting time if you track KPIs that have no value for your business.
Thus, it is vital to know what value the metrics you measure offer your company. For example, tracking vanity metrics like how many likes or followers you have on Instagram may not be necessary. Unless you’re running a campaign to improve those metrics, they don’t provide any valuable insights.
So, if specific metrics don’t help you earn more profit or give you insight into your business and how to improve your marketing campaigns, you shouldn’t focus on them.
Final Thoughts
Every marketer wants their digital marketing campaign to be a success. And if it isn’t, they want to know what’s wrong so they can run tests and improve their performance.
Choosing the right digital marketing metrics to measure your campaign success is a step in the right direction.
Reach out to PWD today so we can help you achieve success with your next marketing campaign and help you measure your performance.