The key to success is being able to understand and measure your digital marketing metrics, without them it would be difficult to improve or learn. Once you have clearly defined the key metrics, KPIs can then be set, to highlight what is working in your campaign and what needs to improve in the future.
The metrics needed will depend on each individual business and its goals. How do you measure the best metrics for your business you may wonder? Establishing your business objectives, and aligning them with each campaign and their KPIs is most beneficial.
Where to begin?
As previously mentioned, every business's needs are different, however, there are some key metrics which may be relevant to most businesses, which can include…
1. Website Traffic
No matter what product or service you are selling, whether or not people are coming to your website is an important factor. If they are not, then you may want to revise your marketing strategy. What could the problem be? Are you targeting the right audience? Have you done keyword research? Do you have concise buyer personas? Website traffic is so important for lead generation and will help you understand your audience's actions after visiting your site. Metrics that you can track include; click-through rate, average session duration and bounce rate.
2. Traffic source
Understanding where your traffic comes from can help you understand where your customers start their journey and the route of the traffic. Using Google Analytics, traffic can be segmented into four different types including:- Direct traffic - searching for a URL
- Organic traffic - finding your site through a search engine
- Referral traffic - through a link from a different site
- Social traffic - visiting your site from social media
Once you are aware of this information, it makes it easier to understand where you should be focusing your efforts. Keep an eye on this metric to save time and resources. Finding out where your audience is most active is a great way to target them, PPC, paid ads and SEO are great tactics to use.
3. Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that turn into qualified leads. In most cases, the more traffic you get, the more leads you will generate, however, this isn't always the case. This metric highlights whether you are efficiently generating leads or not. A high conversion rate suggests your business is giving people what they want, providing the information they need and convincing them to get in contact. Whereas, a low conversion rate could suggest people are not getting the information from you that they need and therefore, leaving to visit competitors' sites instead.
Data capture points and clear CTAs are a great way to generate leads and convert customers. Ensuring you monitor this conversion rate can help to determine the value of your site and how user-friendly it is. A/B tests are great for things such as testimonials, sign-up forms and layout to help to improve conversion rate.
4. Qualified leads
This lead generation effort often takes place through your sales or marketing team directly, with often confusing sales funnels it's important that your qualified leads are segmented. These should be segmented into…
- Marketing qualified leads - this is where prospects have engaged with the marketing team but are not in a position to receive sales calls just yet
- Sales qualified leads - these are people who have highlighted their interest in becoming a paying customer
- Product qualified leads - these are people who have used your product or service and show an interest in becoming a paying customer
5. Website speed
According to Think with Google, 53% of visitors will exit a mobile site if it takes over three seconds to load therefore, measuring the speed of a website is very important. Nowadays, people are very busy so have shorter attention spans, meaning if a website takes too long to load they will move off it and you will inevitably lose leads due to this. This metric should be carefully considered, think about:
- Time to the title - to increase legitimacy, visitors to your site want to see a title appear in the browser tab as soon as possible
- Time to start rendering - the quicker the content appears on a page, the more likely the reader will stay on your site
- Time to interact - this refers to how long a request takes to load such as scrolling a page or clicking on a link
Whether you are building a new site or optimising an old one, the better performance that site has the more likely it will be to generate leads. Ensuring you understand a range of metrics will make your site a lot more user-friendly and will encourage visitors to spend more time on your site.
At Fuelius, our experts can take your business into the stratosphere, helping you turn interest into leads. In addition, we are an Elite HubSpot Partner Agency that has over 25 years of marketing experience - if you're looking to expand the reach of your business - we would love to hear from you. Alternatively, browse the latest blog posts that we have to keep up to date with our latest tips and tricks on how to improve your website.
