Digital Marketing Success
Spending weeks, months, and even years developing a product/service and attempting to grow your company can be an exciting yet taxing experience, especially if you don’t see the results you’re after. Raising brand awareness, connecting with new leads, and converting prospects into customers isn’t as simple as you may think. It takes a lot of time and effort to not only attract said consumers but also retain their attention and brand loyalty.
If you’ve tried out several new and innovative marketing strategies for your business, it might be time to review how your attempts are progressing to better understand how to alter your approaches if necessary.
Methods of measuring your success
On your quest towards measuring your digital marketing success, there are a handful of metrics worth tracking that may aid in providing you with a large overview of your business’ functionality and popularity. The latter approach is considered wiser than simply reviewing the success of one metric alone.
If you place sole importance on your site’s bounce rate, for example, you may feel disheartened thinking that your company is headed for a nasty fall. It’s essential, therefore, to use the appropriate success-measuring tools and website analytics services available to you and analyze the efficiency of multiple criteria to gain a clear overview.
Metrics worth tracking may include:
- Website traffic
The majority of your marketing efforts are most likely directed towards driving traffic to your website, which is the base/central home of your brand. It would, therefore, be unwise to neglect your website traffic data and analytics.
Measuring the increases and drops in your website traffic will allow you better insights into which of your marketing campaigns are thriving and which are letting you down. If, for example, you notice a significant drop in visitors one week, you may be able to trace that lack of success back to a specific tactic that may be worth ditching.
It’s important to note, however, that your marketing tactics may not be to blame in some instances. Troubleshooting your website may reveal broken links, glitches, bugs, and other technical issues that may be deterring your visitors from successfully landing on your page or completing transactions.
Determining where exactly your visitors and customers are coming from is wise, as you’ll be better able to understand your success within specific channels of communication (direct, social, referral, organic) and choose to focus more so on the ones that are producing optimal traffic.
- New vs. returning customers/users
Determining how many new customers are engaging with your brand is key to further understand which outreach techniques are most effective. If you’ve released a fresh campaign or a new product, for example, the number of new users produced will determine how well-received the latter was.
It’s also wise to address how many customers are returning to your website or store, as this will reveal how your efforts track over time and whether your content is attractive enough to warrant a return. If you notice that you aren’t achieving many returns, you may need to look into methods of optimizing not only your website but also the services and products offered. Providing incentives for returning, such as a discount or freebie, for example, maybe wise.
- Conversion rates
Measuring the number of conversions completed on your site is a popular way of calculating the overall success of your marketing department. It’s important to note that ‘conversions’ may mean something other than actual sales, depending upon your marketing goals. Landing more subscribers and downloads, for example, maybe the conversions worth focusing on if those are the areas that you’re wanting your company to target.
If your conversion rates are lacking, this may be indicative of a malfunctioning or poorly designed website and brand image, faulty or unoriginal products, or marketing techniques that are too broad and fail to speak to your desired target audience.
- Most visited pages
Using the correct software, you should consider analyzing where your visitors are spending the majority of their time. This will assist you in understanding which of your website’s pages are most attractive and functional.
- Exit and bounce rates
Exit and bounce rates may not be the most encouraging metrics to track, but they are vital to gauge where your marketing strategies are falling short. If, for example, you’re promoting a specific page on your website, only to have your leads met with poor aesthetics and/or glitches, they may choose to bolt the other direction. Being made aware of which specific pages they’re fleeing from will aid you in optimizing your tactics.
Bounce rates refer to the percentages of visitors that view only one page and then bounce away from your site. Exit rates, on the other hand, relate to those who have spent some time on your website—venturing through several pages—and then decide to exit without any conversions made.
Final thoughts
To optimize your existing marketing strategies, it’s essential to measure their success. There are multiple metrics by which this process can be done. Rather than focusing on one and one alone, it’s wise to collect as much data as possible from each to allow yourself a better success-rate overview.
Mustafa Al Mahmud is the Founder and CEO of Gizmo Concept and also a professional Blogger, SEO Professional as well as Entrepreneur. He loves to travel and enjoy his free moment with family members and friends.