Digital marketing is a complex process that requires the evaluation of different metrics to achieve business objectives. However, with so many digital marketing tools available, finding a single source of truth can be challenging. Evaluating digital marketing performance requires both subjectivity and objectivity – which can be achieved through industry-standard KPIs, clear business objectives, and team-level goals.
While revenue is the primary KPI for any marketing department, digital marketing is more nuanced and complicated. Many companies overlook monitoring their campaigns, leading to wasted budgets. To be successful, digital marketing campaigns should increase leads, boost brand awareness, and generate sales. The success of these goals can be measured using several metrics, which should be chosen based on your defined digital marketing goals.
This guide will dive into the key marketing metrics and KPIs to monitor digital marketing performance. Knowing how to measure the performance of your digital marketing strategy is crucial for improving your efforts and achieving your desired results.
What are digital marketing metrics?
Digital marketing metrics serve as the KPIs for measuring the success of a business’s online marketing efforts. By tracking consumer interactions through websites and social media, businesses can analyse their strategies and customise their approach for increased brand awareness and customer growth. Marketers can also use these metrics to identify successful campaign methods and steer clear of ineffective strategies. Quantifiable marketing KPIs such as increasing organic web traffic, marketing-qualified leads, and reducing the CAC Payback Period can help measure the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. Once KPIs are set, marketers must strategise and track relevant metrics to achieve their targets. While marketing metrics vary by platform, marketers must choose the ones that will track their successes and failures and focus on what truly matters for each campaign.
What is the importance of marketing metrics?
According to a Google study, strategic metrics like gross revenue, market share, or CLV are used by 89% of leading marketers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Using metrics helps with data-driven decision-making, channel optimisation, justifying marketing spend, and increasing ROI. Despite sales cycles taking months or even years, recent research shows that 77% of marketers measure ROI within the first month of launching a campaign. To address this, marketing teams need to establish KPIs to act as goalposts using three key elements:
- measurable metric
- target
- timeline.
KPIs help digital marketers to hone in on where and how to maximise lead conversions and to demonstrate the value of the department to the entire company.
Key marketing metrics to measure your digital campaigns
While not all digital marketing KPIs may be relevant to your business goals, they serve as a starting point in determining your ROI. We’ve compiled a list of the most important digital marketing KPIs that you need to consider. With explanations provided, you can customise your own portfolio of high-impact marketing metrics to measure the success of your future campaigns.
- Overall Website Traffic. The foundation of your digital marketing activities is your website traffic. Monitoring website traffic daily offers valuable insight into the performance of your campaigns. By troubleshooting your website for issues like broken links, duplicate content, or missing metadata, you can optimise its functionality and ultimately drive more traffic.
- Traffic by Source. Knowing where your traffic comes from helps you understand which parts of your digital marketing strategy are effective and which need improvement. Tracking traffic by source, such as organic search, direct visitors, referrals, or social, allows you to focus resources on low-performance campaigns and make informed decisions about their value.
- New Visitors vs. Returning Visitors. This KPI helps determine the effectiveness of your content in attracting new visitors and retaining existing ones. The rate of new visitors can guide you in finding new ways to boost organic traffic, while the rate of returning visitors indicates the overall quality of your content and its ability to engage users.
- Sessions. Sessions represent the number of visits your website receives, with each session having a 30-minute time frame. Tracking the number of unique sessions can provide insight into user engagement and the success of your digital marketing efforts.
- Average Session Duration. This metric indicates the amount of time visitors spend on your website. Depending on the niche and functionality of your site, this may vary in relevance. Factors that influence average session duration include navigational capabilities, website structure and layout, and the quality of content.
- Page Views. Monitoring the number of visits each of your web pages receives within a specific time frame can help you determine the real-time value of your website. High page views indicate a successful digital marketing strategy and engaging content.
- Most Visited Pages. Identifying your most visited pages can help you uncover ways to improve the rest of your site by replicating the engaging elements from these pages. Use heat maps and other indicators to analyse which parts of these pages hold visitors’ attention.
- Exit Rate. The Exit Rate metric shows where users were on your site before leaving, helping you analyse potential flaws in your web design or user experience. Unlike the Bounce Rate, this indicator focuses on visitors who spend time on a page before exiting.
- Bounce Rate. The Bounce Rate measures the number of visitors who leave your site instantly. By monitoring this metric, you can improve the overall quality of your landing pages, especially for SEO or paid advertising campaigns. Reducing bounce rate can be achieved by improving page loading speed, optimising images, and creating engaging calls to action.
- Conversion Rate. The final step in measuring the effectiveness of your digital marketing solutions is tracking the conversion rate, which reveals how well you’re turning visitors into customers. No amount of quality content or paid ads will matter if people leave your site without taking action.
In addition to the above key metrics, consider tracking external KPIs such as Impressions, Social Reach, Social Engagement, Email Open Rate, Click-Through Rate, Cost Per Click, Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Acquisition, and Overall ROI to gain a comprehensive understanding of your digital marketing success.
Maximise your digital marketing impact
Effective digital marketing is essential for businesses looking to increase leads, sales, and brand awareness. To ensure your efforts are successful, regularly check important metrics and compare them to your marketing goals. Working with a digital marketing agency like Creativ Digital can help you develop a multi-faceted marketing plan and monitor the right metrics to ensure success. Measuring your digital marketing strategies is vital to determine what methods are working and which aren’t. With the right approach, you can generate recurring revenue for your business. Contact our team to discuss your marketing activities today!
