With the Right Marketing Metrics, Your Company Stays on Track
Last update: 4 July 2023 at 05:09 pm
5.00/5Online marketing has become an inevitable strategy since the internet revolution to increase a company’s reach and success regardless of its size.
Moreover, marketing actions such as banners, posts, SEO, or even email marketing can now be adapted cost-effectively to the appropriate target groups.
To ensure the success of your marketing concept and the corresponding measures, you should measure, analyze, and evaluate all relevant marketing key figures.
Only in this way can it be seen which actions have a positive effect and where improvements should be made. In today’s article, we will look at precisely this, at the critical figures for online marketing.
Which approach is recommended? Which key figures are essential? How are critical figures analyzed? These are some of the questions we will now get to the bottom of.
The Objective of Key Figures Analysis
To choose the correct key figures, it must, be determined beforehand what purpose the analysis will serve.
Key figures should not be seen as a miracle cure for success; they are tools. They measure the effect that actions have on the target group. The key performance indicators (KPIs) must be determined so that the analysis makes sense.
So, before you even get started, define the objectives with the marketing team, sales, or with management. What performance measurement should you do?
Generally speaking, all objectives can be divided into four broad areas, which can always be specified.
Branding and Brand Development
Branding and marketing are especially crucial for new companies that do not yet have an extensive reach. However, established companies also need to keep up to date to avoid losing touch. Branding measures are also popular when new products or product lines are released.
For branding and brand building, measuring KPIs in social media and monitoring the impact and success of SEO in organic search makes sense.
Sales Figures
Sales figures are almost the most essential marketing metric for online stores and companies offering integrated website sales.
In this area, various KPIs can be applied to document realized sales, record bounce rates, or cancelations. Based on this, you can reduce specific values if necessary.
Leads
Leads are beneficial in industries where services require intensive consultation, such as in the insurance industry or when buying a house. They result from users/inside who are interested in a particular product.
Engagement
User engagement encompasses several marketing metrics, as it looks at all the actions and interactions the target audience has with the company. The metrics are particularly useful in the social media space.
An Overview of the Most Important Marketing KPIs by Area
With so many different KPIs, choosing the right marketing metric for the desired objective can be difficult.
If you have a marketing department and want to evaluate KPIs continuously, it is worthwhile to specialize employees in this area. Of course, analysis procedures can also be outsourced to third parties, such as a data consulting agency.
The appropriate data analytics agency will assemble an intelligent concept that integrates the most important marketing metrics for your purposes and performs the evaluation.
Despite all this, obtaining a specific basic knowledge of all the issues affecting your company and its success is always advisable. Let’s now introduce the most crucial marketing KPIs, which can be roughly divided into four areas.
- Primary KPIs
- KPIs for online commerce
- KPIs for websites
- KPIs for social media
Primary Online Marketing KPIs
Primary marketing metrics can be determined for all companies, regardless of the area. These are basic metrics from business management.
Conversion rate
To determine the Conversion Rate metric, the total number of conversions is set to the total number of visitors /inside the website.
Conversions are actions that the user of the website can perform. These include, for example, newsletter subscriptions, orders, or registration for membership.
Number of Conversions
The number of conversions indicates the total number of previously defined actions. For example, all new subscriptions to the newsletter or orders and registrations in a certain period can be measured.
CPA
The CPA (Cost per Acquisition) value focuses on the company’s costs for marketing. Advertising costs are usually accounted for in cost per click or cost per conversion. CPA puts the advertising costs on the conversions achieved.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Especially in business management, the ROI ratio is one of the most essential profitability indicators. This key figure can be applied not only to online commerce.
In the calculation, divide the profit by the capital employed. If the result is greater than one, then we can say that the business is profitable.
Cost-to-Sales Ratio (CSR)
In the CSR value, costs are divided by sales. The lower the value, the more profitable the marketing activities.
Return of AdSpend (ROAS)
The ROAS indicator focuses on search engine advertising. Here, the profit is divided by the costs incurred in search engine advertising. This includes, for example, activities at Google AdWords. If the calculated figure is positive, the measures are considered successful.
The Most Important Marketing Key Figures for E-Commerce
The key figures for the online commerce sector mainly focus on sales. The following metrics are very similar to the primary marketing metrics.
CPO
Cost per Order is indicated with the CPO key figure. Here, the advertising costs are set for the total number of orders.
Sales
The turnover indicator shows the absolute value of all goods sold.
Orders per Buyer/Order per Visitor
This indicator focuses on customers. It indicates the average number of orders per customer in a given period.
Returns rate
The returns rate indicates how many of the total number of goods sold were returned or not accepted.
Cancellation Rate
The cancellation rate provides detailed information on how high the proportion of canceled contracts and orders is compared to the total number of all orders.
The Most Important Marketing Key Figures for Websites
The following vital figures are very interesting for all companies that do not directly sell products. Online newspapers and marketing blog operators can use these metrics to determine the success of articles and posts to demand reasonable fees for guest articles, for example.
Visits
The critical figure visits provide information about the visits of specific users. How often a user visits the website can be determined by visits.
Unique-Visitors
This is an important key figure for determining the reach of a website. The number of unique visitors is measured.
Page Impressions
Page impressions measure how often the subpages of a website are called up.
Dwell time
How long do users stay on your website? This time can be determined with the vital figure dwell time.
Bounce rate
The bounce rate is a significant key figure. It tells you how many visitors leave your website immediately after the first click without taking any further action.
Click-Through Rate
The click-through rate (CTR) is usually determined for specific marketing campaigns or ads. It provides information on how often your ad was clicked on, leading to your website.
New/Returning Users
This metric measures the number of new users/returning users. Indirectly, the number is an indicator of how high the reach of your platform is.
KPIs for Social Media
Social media is becoming increasingly important for marketing activities. Many potential buyers are on one of popular networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
How your company is perceived is crucial for planned marketing activities. So use the evaluation of the essential marketing key figures on social networks.
Number of Interactions
This key figure includes all actions of users. These can be social shares, retweets, likes, or comments.
Followers/Friends/Contacts
This is one of the most straightforward metrics to determine on social platforms. It indicates how many users have subscribed to or are following your channel.
Impressions
Impressions provide information about how often a post is shown to a user because ads can be shown to followers several times in the feed.
Reach
The critical figure reach indicates how many users have viewed an ad.
Share of Voice
Share of Voice (SoV) is significant, especially in branding. It measures how often your brand is mentioned compared to your direct competitors.
Number of Mentions
Mentions (@) and hashtags (#) show how often your channel or page is mentioned.
Before Collecting Data
Depending on the company, the structure of a so-called KPI dashboard can vary greatly. For this reason, before you start evaluating numbers, choosing the right KPIs for your company is essential.
- Consider which data you need at regular intervals or which you currently already receive via other channels.
- How often do you use the weekly, monthly, or semi-annually values?
- Use the traffic light functions. The colors red, yellow, and green give you a quick overview of whether the selected vital figures are approaching the target state or whether marketing campaigns are needed.
Selecting the Right Figures
As you have seen above, completely different key figures are decisive for different areas. Blog owners, for example, are interested in different data than owners of online stores. So think carefully about which data is essential for the individual objectives to build the metrics dashboard accordingly.
Use these tips to create a clear dashboard:
- Don’t overload the dashboard with too many graphs. With just a few crucial data, you won’t overlook any information, and you’ll get more clarity.
- Choose meaningful metrics for the objective at hand.
- Use visually appealing displays that allow you to read the results quickly.
- Make sure that the comparative figures are meaningful. For example, evaluating sales figures for winter boots in June is not very useful.
A Dashboard for Each Business Unit
Many online tools offer the ability to customize dashboards to specific areas of a business. To do this, different perspectives can be set in the program. Typically, companies sort metrics by these areas:
- Customers
- Finance
- Business processes
- Personnel development
Useful Online Analysis Tools For Your Evaluations
Google Analytics immediately comes to mind for evaluating a wide variety of KPIs. Still, there are now some interesting alternatives that can compete with the free tool with real-time data and a visually appealing layout. Let’s look at selected tools and how they can cover the wide range of KPIs.
Geckoboard
Geckoboard is a well-known provider among dashboard tools. Its focus is on delivering real-time metrics quickly.
The program is web-based and can very quickly extract metrics on clicks, visitors or conversion rate, and others from various web services.
All information is presented visually so your marketing team can read data as easily as the sales team. Trends are immediately visible.
Geckoboard can be booked in four different price classes. The team version with many additional functions is more expensive than the version for one user.
The most important points about Geckoboard:
- Automatic key data update
- Real-time data
- Focus on current developments
- Display on different end devices possible
- Extension of widgets is flexible
- Chargeable
Baremetrics
Baremetrics primarily aims at founders and start-ups who want to monitor their advertising campaigns, marketing share, or other sales measures. You can compile the key figures individually.
The provider convinces with several functions, such as the general control center, forecasts, benchmark analyses, and cancellation rates.
Added to this is Trail-Insight, which provides a better insight into the conversion rate. For this purpose, Baremetrics uses interfaces to other networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Slack, or Evernote.
Baremetrics in summary:
- Very good for beginners
- Real-time data
- User-friendly interface
- Wide range of analysis functions
- The dashboard can be customized.
- Chargeable
Google Analytics
The basic version of Google’s analysis tool is free of charge. The focus is on collecting information about your website. This is achieved by integrating a tracking code on the website, which provides you with various visitor information.
For example, you can determine how many clicks are made on advertisements or content. Which pages do the users visit, and how long do they stay on your site? Do they subscribe to the newsletter, or are orders and inquiries made?
You can use this tool to measure a particular ad quickly is success and how well the target audience receives the entire campaign.
The most important features of the Google tool:
- All collected numbers can be exported.
- Linking of Google AdWords and AdSense is possible.
- Social networks can be integrated.
- Tracking in e-commerce is available.
- Pay attention to privacy, as much different marketing information of the visitors is collected.
When to Start?
Marketing metrics can indicate a company’s trend in marketing, sales, or management. How successfully does the target audience receive advertising? Is the website well-received by users? How many users become regular customers, and how much will this acquisition cost?
These are all very interesting questions that every management asks itself. We use corresponding key figures to answer these questions precisely depending on the set goal.
At first glance, the number of possible KPIs seems overwhelming, but it is worthwhile to look into this topic. When choosing the right KPIs and evaluating them, you can always count on agencies declaring digital marketing and data consulting as their focus areas.
Inform yourself thoroughly, use marketing metrics to give your brand or company more reach, and develop effective marketing measures matching your marketing budget.
