Introduction
Many business owners and managers hear that establishing an online presence with their target audience is essential, but how can the success of a company’s marketing campaign be most accurately measured? Without a methodology to determine whether a marketing campaign is effective, a marketing plan could come across as rudderless and lacking direction. There are precise metrics that you can monitor to ensure it is meeting all of your company’s goals outlined in the original marketing plan.
1: Website Traffic
Your website is your “hub” for your marketing activities. It is your chance to make a first impression on a prospect, and it’s where you control the information that they need to make a decision. It’s also where you can learn if your online marketing campaigns are effective or not. We are always amazed at the number of people we talk to who don’t know who is visiting their website and where they came from.
For a marketing campaign to be effective, there needs to be a call-to-action in the advertisement. Whether it is calling a business on the phone (which might be difficult when employees are working remotely), or visiting its website, a call-to-action is crucial to marketing.
When engaging in digital marketing, it is advisable to have a landing page on your website that speaks to the ad with a specific call-to-action. To test an ad’s effectiveness, it is helpful to analyze the overall website traffic to understand. If an ad is doing its job, the website will have consistent visitors intrigued with the product or service being offered. If, however, there is limited traffic, it may be time for you to change your marketing campaign.
2: Traffic Sources
Another fundamental metric to monitor regularly is your website traffic sources. There are different sources that direct people to a website page, and you need to strategize based on the medium in which you receive the most leads. Whether it be social media, Google, or perhaps word-of-mouth, you must ensure that you maintain focus on maximizing traffic from every source available. This focus will occasionally involve investing more money into a specific platform’s advertisements or prioritizing one platform over another because most of your audience exists on that specific platform. Some mediums will work better than others, depending on your industry and target audience.
3: Cost Per Lead (CPL)
The cost per lead metric (CPL) is essential to contemplate as it helps to measure the cost-effectiveness of a marketing campaign relative to the number of prospective clients created. IF the cost for each customer is too great, there needs to be a change to a company’s approach to their marketing as it is too expensive. The more effective the advertisement campaign, the lower the cost will be for each lead. If an organization releases a high quantity of advertisements with low quality, it will cost more money and not attract the leads needed for the organization to function ideally.
4: Average Time on a Website
The average time a person spends on your website indicates their interest in your services and speaks to the quality of the website itself. This is called the “bounce rate”. If a website is not easy to navigate and isn’t appealing to look at, potential clients will immediately start questioning the quality of the products and services. Building an attractive site for interested clients will naturally result in higher quality leads in the organization’s future.
Ensuring your website is responsive for mobile devices is also key. If it isn’t, then your ad visitors are going to jump off quickly and probably not click on your ad again.
5: Goals
Establishing goals and tracking on your website is critical to understanding your ad’s effectiveness. Goals can be defined as brochure downloads, visits to a specific page, a contact or lead form submission, a product purchase – anything that will help you get a lead or broaden the awareness of your brand and ultimately lead to a new customer or sale. Most web tracking tools provide a way to set up goals.
Tools
Some websites such as WordPress come with easy-to-install plug-ins to collect web statistics. There may not give you the full range that you can achieve with tools such as Google Analytics, which can be enhance even further with Google Tag Manager for the tracking of PDF files, exit links, form submissions and more.
Conclusion
Overall, monitoring the proper metrics will lead to more effective advertising and marketing campaigns throughout the evolution of your organization and its brand. By tracking the activity and sources of your website engagement, there is no doubt that you will see growth in your clientele base and overall success. This is where a marketing agency can provide expertise and assistance in determining your marketing goals, setting up analytics, and interpreting the data for you.