Analytics data provides an insight to the success of your marketing campaigns. However, data only becomes helpful if you actually invest time into it – without thorough analysis of your data, it remains relatively useless.
No matter what you’re collecting information on – email open rates, social media ads, or PPC campaigns, you’ll need to closely study the numbers to find the answers you’re looking for.
With that said, it’s time to put all those graphs and spreadsheets to work.
Collecting data is great, but unless you’re taking the time to carefully analyze it, you’re wasting a valuable resource. Analytics data is valuable because it shows you where you might be wasting resources, while also revealing new opportunities for growth.
Looking at the bigger picture is a common tactic in business strategy, and it helps you prove overall ROI. However, in order to make the most of your analytics data, you need to adopt a slightly different approach. Instead of assessing overall ROI, focus on looking at each marketing campaign on an individual basis.
This will allow you to closely track marketing KPIs, determine which campaigns are and aren’t working, and identify why.
There are many different kinds of marketing campaigns, and each one has a different set of KPIs you should track to determine the success of that specific campaign. Tracking KPIs across all your different campaigns will help you determine the overall efficiency and impact of your greater marketing strategy.
Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are when you pay a fee every time a user clicks on your ad and visits your site. These ads often pop up on third party websites and on search engine results pages.
KPIs to measure:
Tracking your click-through rate will provide insight into how well your ad entices searchers to click on your ad. Your average click-through rate (CTR) is a good indicator of the overall performance of your campaign.
To measure your CTR, use the equation:
(# of clicks your ad received/total impressions) x 100
For example, if your ad received 1,000 impressions and was clicked on 100 times, you divide 100 by 1000, and then multiply by 100, to receive an average CTR of 10 percent.
Want to know how you measure up? Check out the average CTR in your industry here:
Source: Serpstat
Your Google quality score is based on a 1-10 scale which gauges how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing pages are to a searcher’s query.
This KPI is a little more complex because it’s comprised of multiple elements, including CTR, ad relevance, and the quality of your landing page. If you need a little more help figuring this one out, Google’s chief economist Hal Varian explains it further in this video.
Conversion rate is an incredibly important metric to track when considering the success of your PPC campaigns.
Your conversion rate displays the percentage of people that convert from leads into customers through your ad. This ultimately shows how effective your campaign’s messaging is, and may help you determine how it can be improved.
To calculate your conversion rate, use the equation:
# of conversions from campaign / total clicks
CPC and CPA reveal the price you pay for each new customer you acquire. Determining how much you’re spending on acquiring new business is an important metric to track to determine the sustainable use of your resources for future growth.
If your CPC is high, how can you lower it to make a more efficient conversion process for higher profits?
Public relations (PR) campaigns take many forms, but ultimately, there are a few KPIs that help you gauge the success of any campaign.
KPIs to measure:
This one is pretty self explanatory, but active coverage and potential reach involves the number of people you make an impression on with your campaign.
How many people can you get your campaign in front of?
Your share of voice implies your breadth of audience coverage compared to that of your competitors.
Consider the top competitors within your industry, and pay attention to how much engagement and reach they’re achieving with their campaigns.
Consider how and where your brand appears within content.
The prominence of your brand name and how it’s referenced contributes to the overall quality of how your campaign and company is represented.
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Determine how much website traffic you earned as a result of your brand placement throughout media sources. This way, you can see how your hard work of earning media coverage is paying off on your site.
Email marketing campaigns come in many different forms, but they can all benefit from tracking and analyzing data collected through the course of their run.
KPIs to measure:
Your email campaign click-through rate is based on the number of recipients who visit links contained within the delivered email. Your email click-through rate is a good indicator of how successful your campaign is, and how impactful the messaging within your emails is.
To calculate your click-through rate, use the equation:
(# of clicks on links / # of delivered emails) x 100
For example, if you deliver 150 emails, and recipients click on links within that email 35 times, you end up with the equation (35 / 150) X 100 = click-through rate of 23 percent.
Your bounce rate correlates with how many emails weren’t successfully delivered to recipients. This is largely due to incorrect or inactive email addresses logged within your email subscription list.
To calculate your bounce rate, use the equation:
(# of bounced emails / # of emails sent) x 100
So if you send 150 emails, and 15 of them bounce, you end up with: (15 / 150) X 100 = 10 percent bounce rate.
Your list growth rate correlates to how quickly your email subscriber list grows.
To calculate your list growth rate, use the equation:
([# of new subscribers – (# of unsubscribes + email spam complaints)] / total # of subscribers) x 100
For example, if you have 47 new subscribers, 9 unsubscribers, and 500 total subscribers currently on your list, your equation would look something like this:
([47 - 9] / 500) X 100 = 7.6 percent growth rate.
Your conversion rate is based upon how many recipients completed a desired action. Your conversion rate also ties into your click-through rate, as recipients often have to click on a link in your email before being directed to complete an action, such as purchasing a product or requesting a demo.
To calculate your conversion rate, use the equation:
(# of people who completed the desired action /
# of emails delivered) x 100
Your overall return on interest (ROI) is one of the most important metrics to track when it comes to analyzing the success of your email marketing campaign.
There are multiple ways to calculate the ROI of your email campaign, but this equation is a fairly common method:
[(Total $ revenue brought in by campaign – total $ spent on campaign)/total $ spent on campaign] x 100
For example, if you spent $200 on your campaign and generated a revenue of $750, your equation would look something like this:
[(750 – 200) / 200] X 100 = ROI of 275 percent.
Search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns can help you climb rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive huge amounts of organic traffic to your website. There are a number of different marketing KPIs that are important to track when analyzing how effective your SEO campaign is.
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With SEO campaigns, your bounce rate indicates how many users immediately exit a page without performing an action. Analyzing this metric could provide insight into how effective your CTAs are on your web pages, and whether they’re making the right impact on your audience.
Your organic search traffic is based upon how many people naturally visit your website as directed by search engines. Organic search traffic is great, but it’s important to make sure that you’re receiving relevant organic traffic from your target audience.
Receiving traffic from people who are not within your target audience can bring down your conversion rate, as they are not likely to find value in your products or services.
Keyword ranking plays a big role in your placement within SERPs, and thus how much organic traffic finds your page. Use a tool like Moz to track your ranking for targeted keywords associated with your unique industry, and even your brand name.
Your organic conversion rate indicates how many visitors naturally complete a desired action on your webpage, whether it’s purchasing a product, subscribing to your mailing list, or filling out an inquiry survey.
When you’re analyzing this data, make sure you set goals and know exactly what kind of action you’re tracking.
Your average session duration indicates how long visitors spend on a page. This metric is a good indicator for the level of quality of the content on your page.
Pages with a robust amount of high quality content will track a higher average session duration because visitors will be more engaged and spend more time on your page. On the other hand, pages with thin, low quality content will likely receive low average session durations.
Your domain authority score shows the quality of backlinks that your site receives, and thus affects your SEO. You should always try to score backlinks from high quality websites that receive a lot of traffic, so their impactful SEO juice gets transferred from their page to yours.
Domain authority is tracked on a 100-point scale, with higher numbers indicating a higher ranking potential on SERPs.
Event marketing is a great way to generate leads and network with other professionals within your industry.
While event KPIs aren’t necessarily along the same lines of the complex electronic data of other campaigns, there are still a few important metrics that you should keep track of to determine your ROI from this marketing pathway.
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One of the most important metrics to track for event marketing is how many tickets are being sold or how many people are signing up.
When doing this, you can also look at their demographics of each registrant, such as geographic locations and source of the ticket sale. This will provide insight into the success of your marketing channels.
Your website conversion rate correlates to the number of people who purchase tickets directly from your website. Tracking this kind of data will allow you to see how successfully channels direct buying traffic to your website, and even how efficient the purchasing process is on your page.
Attendance numbers may not exactly match the number of ticket sales that were made. Keep track of how many people attend the event (something as simple as a sign-in sheet will do), and after the event, compare it to the number of ticket sales that were made.
Keeping track of this could indicate how impactful your event promotion is in the days leading up to the event, which reminds and encourages ticket buyers to attend.
Conducting attendee surveys is a great way to measure satisfaction levels of your event guests, and thus the overall success of your event. Guest satisfaction levels can indicate how much value they found in your event and whether or not they’re likely to attend another one.
Try sending out an email survey to the guests the day after the event, so it’s still fresh in their mind.
Social media campaigns are an incredibly important element of any successful digital marketing strategy. Social campaigns can vary in approach, but one of the most popular strategies is through engaging with influencer marketing.
You should always analyze KPIs on each individual social platform you use, rather than lumping them together. This will display more accurate data and help you better understand the successes and pitfalls of your campaigns.
KPIs to measure:
Engagement will likely look different on each social platform, but the most common metrics to track here are clicks, likes, and comments.
While lots of likes are always great, clicks and comments are the most valuable forms of engagement to receive, as it shows that people are actively communicating with you and your brand and thus find your content valuable and entertaining.
Impressions identify how many people saw your content in their feed, but did not actively engage with it. Tracking impressions allows you to see just how many people are getting eyes on your content, and thus whether you’re reaching a small or wide set audience.
Social traffic identifies many people were directed from your social channels to visit your site.
Keep track of which specific channels this traffic is coming from, whether Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and this will help you determine which ones are the most effective in directing people to your website.
If you’re using social media effectively, then you should be raking in lots of leads from your social channels.
Tracking lead generation will allow you to see how many social users become contacts and turn into leads for your company to follow up with. It’s a good indicator that you’re reaching your target audience through your social channels.
You should also keep track of whether leads come from organic posts or paid ads – this will help you determine the benefits of both options.
Customer acquisition indicates how many converted customers you receive through your social media channels and efforts. This begins in the lead generation stage, thus it’s closely tied to that metric.
That being said, high lead generation does not necessarily mean that you’ll have a high customer acquisition rate – this comes down to how effective your sales process is.
A lot customer acquisition rate could indicate problems, such as low quality leads generated by your social efforts, or your sales team is having trouble closing deals.
Tracking marketing analytics is the most important first step in maximizing results for each of your campaigns. And by focusing on each individual campaign avenue, you'll be able to better strengthen your overall marketing strategy for optimum impact and efficiency.
Your analytics data tells a story about your campaigns and your brand and how you're growing and progressing through your industry and making an impact on your audience. Just make sure you listen closely to each story so each campaign gets a happy ending.