How do You Evaluate Digital Marketing Performance? By James Tredwell on April 6, 2019 While most companies today have a digital marketing strategy, not many are actively controlling theirs. What does that mean? That they cannot shape the opinions formed behind their back on Facebook,Pinterest, Twitter, or other social media websites. What they should realize by now is that customer opinion will form, and it is always better to be able to nudge it gently in the right direction via direct participation. Therefore, a company’s presence on different digital platforms matters. That means, if you run a company, you should focus on matters of digital marketing. But how can you do that?In several steps and the first of those is: Getting in deep and evaluating what you envisioned You may have set some goals in the past that you expected to meet via digital marketing. If that is so, then you need to determine whether that worked out or not. Some examples of digital marketing goals are: How many times are your blog posts shared on social media? Is your fan base big enough or do you need it to grow on social networking websites? How many times has your brand name been mentioned on social media sites? Does your company have any positive reviews on Yelp or Google Reviews? How many? Have you already set your goals? Then stop to check whether you are achieving them or not. When you don’t know if you have hit your target projections, how will you know what needs improvement?Then compare those goals with what your company needs to achieve in the present to succeed. It might be time to extend those old goals, do away with them completely, or add new ones. If you didn’t set any goals, then start doing so. Choosing what to measure How will you know which goals to choose? Through KPIs, which are factors that will influence your organization’s targets or its goals.Most types of KPIs, such as a valuable online interaction through your company’s site or page, are related to conversions. Of course, different businesses will define conversions differently,such as a purchase made or a user filling in a contact form. If they know the definition and stick to measuring it, they will do fine. But these metrics come in two flavors: The measurable metrics KPIs that can be quantified and those that are in alignment with your organization’s goals, such as sales or leads should be included.Startups may not have either early in the game. They can measure engagement and reach instead Leading indicators or as economists say metrics that indicate the path the economy will take. They can show you whether the type of marketing company you are putting your efforts, time, and money into is useful and if it will bear significant results or not.An example is measuring how many visitors spend more than 3 minutes on the website when they aren’t even filling in the contact form! The metrics to ignore Anything that you can’t impact, or change, shouldn’t be considered a KPI Vanity metrics, such as a keyword on Google that wouldn’t bring in any traffic that can be converted. But we explain this concept in detail below Knowing which really matter in digital marketing — Vanity or value metrics Usually, metrics mean a characteristic that can be quantified. If you keep thinking in abstract terms, such as thought leadership, you will never see any numbers. By focusing on other useless metrics, such as the number of social media likes, you won’t be able to select the real KPIs. For marketers, KPIs are crucial because they correlate to ROI. When you use the so-called vanity metrics, you won’t have an accurate idea of your marketing effectiveness. Vanity Don’t let these metrics steal your focus: Web traffic Page views Time on site Impressions Keyword rankings Social media followers Bounce rate Value The metrics that you should be focusing on are: eBook downloads Customer lifetime value Sales-qualified leads Conversion rates Customer acquisition costs For the ROI framework that you intend to create, you will need valuable and not vanity metrics. The former doesn’t just deal with surface-level analytics data. They also look at the whole picture and how your business is really doing! Choosing a Good Analytics Platform and getting the most use out of it After selecting your metrics, you will need the right platform to analyze and quantify them. You don’t have to do anything manually. Many of these tools are even free to use, such as Google Analytics. Below we categorize these useful platforms based on the measurement index they are intended for: Website Analytics Knowing everything about your website should be the first thing on your list if you want to evaluate your digital marketing performance. The following tools can help with that: Google Analytics is amazing because it is free, Google-provided,and can be used to track traffic to your site and for other useful information Web trends is the platform that you can use for your multi-channel measurements. You get a snapshot of analytics from the web, social media, and mobile platforms Moz is nothing if not comprehensive. It combines even more avenues and brings you analytics from search, inbound marketing, social, and social listening SEO Analytics Aside from Google and Moz, you can use these tools to analyze the success of your SEO tactics and campaigns: HubSpot becomes integrated into your content, which makes it easier for you to monitor and optimize it RavenTools provides you with an interactive list with which you can rise within the ranks. It taps both into Google and Bing for the data that it sends your way! Social Media You may want to check out these tools to measure social analytics: Socialbakers Analytics compare your social analytics and other relevant data with that of your competitors Adobe Social is a multi-purpose tool that can be used for social listening, publishing, and social media measurement Are you ready to evaluate how well you are doing — or can do — on the digital marketing front? Then get started! This article is contributed by Alma Causey, Freelance writer at thriveagency — Thrive Marketing Company . Have an interesting article or blog to share with our readers? Let’s get it published.
