4 Digital Marketing Metrics That Really Matter

When you look at your monthly analytics report, what are you really seeing? Over the last couple of years, big data has now become super big data with the amount of information that new technology can now gather. However, marketers and business owners can quickly get a feel for how overwhelming it is to look through the bundles of charts, percentages, graphs and not know how to apply this data to improve or enhance their current marketing strategy.

What in the world are you looking at and how can these numbers provide you with a strong trajectory towards pure marketing success? Here are the four digital marketing metrics to pay close attention to and tips on how to use these metrics to update and improve your marketing strategy.

Online Exposure: Reach 

The most important metric for any marketers or business owner is reach.  Reach is the total number of people in a company’s email database, social media following, or blog subcribers.  Basically, anyone who is exposed to content or any kind of marketing messages.  It’s an important metric because it sets the stage for your overall buying process and determines the overal width of your sales and marketing funnel.

For the highest amount of reach online, make sure you devote time and energy to create an integrated web presence strategy.  With so many online visitors interacting with brands in different ways on the web and through several different devices, it’s absolutely critical to extend beyond just a website and add other components into the mix such as mobile integration, social media, blogging, public relations, SEO, and videos.

TIP: A website should do more than play the part of an online brochure.  Make sure you’re taking advantage of other areas such as keeping up with a blog, including links and outlinks, consistently posting web content on social media and bookmarking sites.  This will increase your exposure and help you build a powerful online brand identity. 

Website Traffic: Number of Visits  

Marketers need to pay attention to overall website visits and the bounce rate, which is, how many visitors are looking at your site and quickly leaving.  The number of total website visitors per month can be very valuable, but what’s important as well is how long web visitors are staying on your site before they leave.  Ideally, a lower bounce rate means the website is engaging visitors and keeping them there to learn more about your products and services – a good thing.

TIP: If you’re trying to increase web visits or your bounce rate is higher than you expected, try making improvements on title tags and meta descriptions tags to make them as detailed and relevant as possible to your company.  These text tags help search engine rankings and help list search engine results.  Fixing tags will encourage those who are interested in you products and services to click and discover results they expect to find. And keeps those who aren’t as interested to keep scrolling.  

Visitor Engagement: Average Time Spent per Visit

Average time on site should be as high as possible.  Are you creating content that is relevant to your ideal customers?  If a customer stays on your site longer, visits multiple pages, or makes more than one visit to your site, you are doing something right.  Take a look at the average pages per visit in conjunction with this metric to find out how engaging your content is.

TIP: To help improve customer engagement, try video.  Video attracts 2-3x as many monthly visitors, doubles time on site, and has a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines (Source: MarketingSherpa).  Post a company overview video that’s about 1-2 minutes long about your company, products, and services on you homepage.  Additionally, create interesting, helpful content that visitors will see, download, and want to read more.  This can be done by adding great photos, video resources, and free eBook downloads with the help of a content marketing strategy.

Conversion Rate: Percentage of Leads/Total Visitors

If you’re spending money on expanding your web presence, be sure that you’re paying close attention to conversion rates, the ratio of website visitors that convert into leads, subscribers, or purchasers.  In addition, the number of leads can present you with how much overall interest you are generating for products, services, and online content.

TIP: Take a look at leads generated by source which can display the top places visitors are finding you, whether it’s through other reputable sites such as a partner site or via social media.  This can give you a good handle on what to focus your current efforts on.  Or, if lead generation is low for certain sources compared to others, it could help you find kinks or lost tracks that may be hindering you from capturing leads.

Finally, if you’re looking for a great web analytics software, Hubspot is always a good choice for marketing analytics on entities like websites, blogs, emails, forms, landing pages, calls-to-action, and more. We’re now a gold-certified preferred Hubspot partner, which means we can help you set up an account and provide you with a winning inbound marketing strategy to go along with it.

About Small Screen Producer

Small Screen Producer is a full service, marketing firm located in Houston, Texas that specializes in online digital media marketing through a 4-step process. Step 1: WE PLAN a custom web presence strategy for your business through website design and development, mobile development, social media account creation and branding. STEP 2: We then POSITION your brand through Pay-Per-Click advertising and search engine optimize tactics that include on-page and off-page SEO that are Google and Bing approved. STEP 3: We then PROMOTE your brand using an Inbound marketing strategy or a content marketing strategy to help you accomplish your marketing goals. We do this through blogging, video production, infographics, call-to-actions, landing pages, and free educational offers. We help you build trust and rapport with your customer base. STEP 4: We then PROTECT your brand’s web presence with a reputation management program that monitors social media and on line reviews. Get started today with a free online marketing assessment of your company’s web presence. Your company deserves it.