Marketers have been trying to measure their performance since the early days of advertising, but it wasn’t until the emergence of key digital marketing metrics that these experts were able to quantify their results.
Today, digital marketing metrics have become an essential part of any online strategy. But, there’s still a large portion of small businesses that don’t track or leverage the power of marketing statistics.
At Fannit, we’ve helped hundreds of local businesses grow and succeed through metrics-based marketing campaigns.
Our team has an in-depth understanding of the top digital marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) companies have to monitor as well as first-hand experience creating successful campaigns using these metrics.
In this article, we’ll go over the definition of internet marketing metrics and the benefits of monitoring these statistics.
We’ll also share the top 25 most important metrics for online marketing as well as tips on how to use the data you collect.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/digital-marketing-tips/
What Are Digital Marketing Metrics?
Before going over some of the stats you should be monitoring, let’s take money to define digital marketing metrics.
In the digital marketing context, your metrics refer to the statistical performance of your website.
Unlike traditional advertising channels, online promotion techniques can be tracked.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/how-to-do-digital-marketing/
This means that you can see how much money you spend, the number of website visitors that saw your content, and many other digital marketing KPIs.
Now, this is possible thanks to tracking tools like Google Analytics. That said, keep in mind that learning about marketing statistics and how to use them can take some time.
The good news is that you can work with a knowledgeable marketing agency and start leveraging the metrics you collect, even if you don’t have time to learn everything yourself.
The Benefits of Tracking and Monitoring the Right Digital Marketing KPIs
There are many benefits to using tools designed to track your digital metrics, which is the reason why this practice has become the norm.
According to Google, about 89% of leading digital marketers leverage different metrics to build successful campaigns.
So, if you have the right knowledge and digital marketing strategy in place, you should be able to achieve great results from your advertising spend.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/benefits-of-digital-marketing/
But, remember to identify the right key performance indicators or KPIs for your specific business.
In simple terms, a KPI is an essential metric that gives you true insight into the marketing performance of your campaign.
Every company has a unique mix of digital marketing KPIs, so create a set of statistics that you absolutely need to track and make sure to steer clear from vanity metrics, which are numbers that give you an incomplete image of your performance.
In addition to the above, some of the top benefits of monitoring the right key performance indicators include:
Stay on Par with Competitors (or Create a Competitive Advantage)
As Google’s statistics suggest, the vast majority of successful marketing professionals leverage digital metrics to achieve their goals.
Therefore, if you’re in an industry that focuses heavily on marketing, monitoring the right metrics has gone from a rare commodity to a glaring necessity.
Now, remember that most small businesses don’t have a marketing team or even an appointed manager.
Small business owners that find themselves in a relatively traditional industry don’t always focus on marketing KPIs.
So, if this is your case, tracking and monitoring your metrics can actually become a competitive advantage.
Boost Your Campaigns’ Collective ROI
One of the biggest differences between conventional and modern marketing tactics is the ability to quantify the results and compare them against your investment.
Businesses can then accurately track their respective return-on-investment or ROI, which tells them how much money they are making for every dollar spent.
By tracking and monitoring the right KPIs, you can set benchmarks, figure out what ROI you should expect, and take control of your marketing spend.
Once you set the initial numbers in stone, you can look at the areas that are providing the best results and focus your efforts on this.
Reduce the Marketing Spend (Or Maintain It to Grow)
Marketing is an essential department within every company.
But, there are many reasons why a business may want to reduce their marketing spend, even temporarily.
Fortunately, the right metrics can help you bolster the performance to the point that you can lower your marketing investment without sacrificing performance.
If you track the appropriate digital marketing key metrics, you’ll be able to optimize your campaign performance and increase your ROI.
At this point, you can either choose to lower your marketing spend or keep a steady revenue flow.
The other option is to maintain your marketing spend the same, which results in growth (as long as your ROI remains high).
Achieve Sustainable and Predictable Growth
Marketing and advertising strategies have become more organized every decade, and this is no coincidence.
The best way to attract potential customers is to quantify your marketing efforts.
Now, it is impossible to do this if you don’t create a sales funnel and track your digital marketing campaign performance.
From the number of paying customers to the initial investment and the revenue generated, tracking the right marketing metrics will help you understand the impact that your decisions are having.
If you take the time to analyze the patterns and figure out which endeavors are producing the best results, your metrics analysis process can help you develop better digital marketing strategies that result in predictable and sustainable growth.
Identify the Strategies that Work Best
In addition to creating strategies that increase your web traffic, you can also look at the individual metrics of each technique to narrow down the best performers.
Make sure to analyze the bounce rate and other metrics of each platform separately.
For example, you should create a set of KPIs for social media platforms, another for mobile users, another for your blog post strategy, and so on.
For example, you may find that your initial metrics analysis shows that the best approach is a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign through Google Ads and a paid social media campaign.
If you notice that your PPC ads are the main ones driving traffic, you can redirect most of your resources to this technique.
This, in turn, should help you grow your marketing funnel as well as your sales funnel while still attempting to reach users through multiple channels.
Improve Employee Performance
One of the unsung benefits of key metrics for digital marketing is that you can use it them evaluate the performance of your marketing team.
Important metrics like customer acquisition cost, total web traffic generated, and the current number of leads in the marketing funnel are the best ways to measure success.
If you find that these important marketing metrics are below average markers, it’s a sign that you need to improve your marketing strategy.
The good news is that these same metrics highlight your areas of improvement, which gives your marketers the queues they need to make the right improvements.
Identify Troublesome Trends and Address Them Ahead of Time
The use of digital marketing metrics doesn’t have to be reactive.
As a matter of fact, once you make the right adjustments and ensure that all your stats are in the green, the next natural step is to start identifying troublesome trends.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/future-of-digital-marketing/
The reason for this is that negative trends are usually a sign of what’s to come, so they work as a warning for your business.
For example, if you notice that you’re getting less mobile traffic but you haven’t changed your marketing budget, you may need to adapt to a new consumer tendency that’s changing the way users search for data.
25 Key Digital Marketing Metrics You Should Pay Close Attention To
Now that we’ve shared the benefits of tracking the metrics of your digital marketing campaigns, let’s take a look at the most impactful statistics you can monitor.
There are two very important elements to keep in mind.
First of all, every single business is different.
Some measure success exclusively by the number of paying customers generated, while others take a broader approach and consider all performance elements.
You need to figure out which system is best for your business and create a personalized digital marketing analytics strategy for your brand.
Second, remember that all digital marketing efforts have a unique set of metrics.
This is because metrics analysis can be applied to all levels of your strategy.
You can evaluate metrics for a specific page, organic traffic, keywords you use, and all other marketing channels that are part of your mix.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/traditional-marketing-vs-digital-marketing/
With this in mind, let’s take a look at our picks for the 25 top key metrics for digital marketing.
Remember that we’re including a mix of search engine optimization (SEO), social media, PPC, email marketing metrics and many more, but we’ll point out where you can use each statistic we recommend.
1. Total Site Traffic
The first digital marketing metric we’ll discuss is total site website traffic. As the name suggests, this metric measures the number of visitors that a particular marketing channel has sent to your website. This includes both returning and new visitors, but most tracking tools allow you to filter them accordingly.
You can categorize these visitors in a lot of different ways, but the most basic level is by desktop and mobile devices.
Note that you can measure the individual website traffic for each channel or look at your marketing efforts as a whole.
That said, this is a key metric for organic search strategies like small business SEO.
Not only this, but remember that this metric can be countered by a high bounce rate, so remember to check both before making adjustments to your site.
2. Traffic Source
If you’re looking at the performance of your digital marketing strategy as a whole, then you’ll need to analyze your web traffic based on the traffic source.
The traffic source is the page or platform that has sent the visitor to your site.
Common website traffic sources include social media networks, paid search engine marketing campaigns, organic landing page links, and many more.
In terms of digital marketing measurement identifying the traffic source is crucial because it helps you understand which efforts are performing well.
Now, remember that the success of your digital marketing campaigns should be judged by much more than sheer traffic, but this is always a great place to start.
3. New Visitors vs. Returning Users
As a business owner, you’re probably aware that bringing in new customers is usually more expensive than attracting recurring clients.
You should see your website visitors the same way and pay a lot of attention to returning users.
This is one of the most important digital marketing metrics because it also allows you to calculate your percentage of returning customers.
When a user returns to your page frequently, especially through organic search results, this person has a higher chance of becoming a paying customer.
You can learn from this statistic even if you’re not performing well.
Look at it this way: if you notice that recurring visitors have the same or a lower bounce rate than recurring customers, it means that your title and metadata are great, but the content on your page needs some work.
4. Number of Sessions
The number of sessions describes the number of times a user accessed your page and started browsing.
Note that the generalized sessions metric includes visits from the same users.
You can also divide and analyze the number of sessions based on whether they come from new or returning customers.
5. Average Session Duration
The average session duration is one of the most helpful online marketing metrics because it tells you how engaged your visitors are. This metric measures how long each session is, in other words, how long users stay on your site each time they visit.
Note that the purpose of your site will directly impact this metric.
For example, informational and ecommerce sites have very different expectations. Additionally, session duration metrics also vary depending on your industry.
If you notice that your average session duration is too long, it means that you need to improve elements of your user experience or UX. in this case, ask yourself:
- How intuitive is my site?
- Can users find the information they are looking for quickly?
- How long does it take for your site to load?
6. Pageviews
The pageviews metric allows you to see how many times a specific page was accessed.
Keep in mind that this includes all views, although you can usually filter out either recurring or new customers depending on what you need.
Pageviews usually include both paid and organic traffic as well, but you can also see this data from specific traffic sources.
It’s important to understand that pageviews is an extremely broad metric, so you shouldn’t make any large decisions based solely on this statistic.
You should treat it more like a general metric that helps you understand the overall health of distinct pages and your site as a whole.
7. Most Visited Pages
The success of every digital marketing campaign hinges on identifying the most valuable pages of a website.
The most visited pages metric is simple, but it can help you narrow down the list of top-performing pages.
All reliable digital marketing analytics platforms have this metric available, including Google Analytics, so this statistic should be one of your first points of call every time.
As the name suggests, the most visited pages simply list the areas of your site that are getting the most traffic.
While analyzing this metric, you should also look at the user flow, or the steps that the visitor took to get to that page.
You should find out if the visitor came from a backlink, directly to the site, or by browsing your pages.
8. Exit Rate
Before explaining this step, let’s clarify one thing: all users exit your site at some point.
So, the exit rate doesn’t necessarily measure whether or not your visitors exited, but instead, it points out where your visitors lost interest in your content.
The exit rate of your site is extremely revealing, but you have to know how to leverage it properly.
For instance, if you’re analyzing an informational page, you should have a different set of goals than if you’re monitoring a service or product page.
Remember to also look at the page where users went to (if available) to help determine if the one being analyzed has served its purpose.
For instance, if your visitors are leaving an informational page to read content that’s part of the sales funnel, you can assume that the original page is performing well.
9. Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is completely different from the exit rate, even if both measure a similar event.
In simple terms, the bounce rate of a site measures how many users visited a page and left without looking at any other pages of the website.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/seo/bounce-rate/
This act of leaving quickly and without consuming additional content is known as a bounce, which gives the name to this metric.
There are many different elements that impact bounce rate, but generally speaking, websites with a bad user experience tend to have a high bounce rate.
Here are some areas that may be causing your bounce rate to soar:
- Pages load too slowly
- Relevant information is hard to find
- Content is useful, but not engaging
- There is a page loading error
- The site has an old or clunky design
Keep in mind that the bounce rate is usually a metric that’s measured in search engine optimization, content marketing, and any other technique that centers around your website pages.
10. Conversion Rate
Back in the early days of digital marketing, there was a lot of focus on vanity metrics.
Although they do have value, superficial metrics can lead businesses to the wrong conclusions.
For this reason, you need to make sure that you monitor metrics that provide true value and insights.
The conversion rate of your content is a great example of a type of metric that gives you a clear idea of how your campaigns are performing.
The best part is that you can track the conversion rate of each individual part of your strategy as well as your entire campaign, which gives you a good idea of the performance of your entire mix.
The conversion rate of your campaign tells you the percentage of users you convert into leads or paying customers.
The formula to calculate this metric varies depending on what you consider a conversion. But, in most cases, it’s the number of conversions divided by the number of users who interacted with your content.
11. Impressions
An impression is a type of interaction and it can be defined as the moment a user views your content.
While impressions can be tracked for almost all types of content, it’s used mainly in PPC campaigns and other types of paid online ads.
In addition to helping you gauge the success of your PPC strategy, impressions are also essential in branding campaigns.
Companies that are on the branding stage prefer to focus on getting views and similar interactions, rather than looking at conversion rates.
12. User Locations and Other Demographic Data
Personalizing your content is more important than ever before, so you should look at the user locations and other demographic data available through your tracker. The information will vary depending on the platform you use, but it can include details like city, gender, browser, OS, and even certain browsing habits.
13. Social Engagement
Although it’s related to reach, social engagement is a simpler metric that’s easier to track.
With that said, some tracking service providers have developed their own formula that’s meant to be more revealing than the conventional version.
This internet marketing metric measures how many users interact with your content.
Now, this metric usually excludes impressions, which means that users have to take an additional step besides viewing your content for a short period of time.
However, when it comes to formats like video content, you can generate interactions by having users watch past a certain threshold.
14. Email Open Rate
As the name suggests, this metric measures the percentage of your marketing emails that were opened by the recipients.
This metric is only available for email marketing campaigns, but remember that this type of strategy can be used for both web traffic generation as well as lead generation.
While a good open rate isn’t the only thing that will define your email marketing success, it’s an important milestone that you need to clear.
That said, also remember to monitor other metrics and create a tailored measuring system for your campaigns.
15. Click-Through Rate
Whether it’s for your landing pages, paid ads, email marketing sequences, or social media posts, the click-through rate or CTR measures the percentage of users that clicked on your ad.
It’s important to note that you need to have the impressions metric available to calculate the CTR of your marketing content.
Not only this, but the click-through rate only measures one type of interaction (clicks) so you should use additional metrics to complement your results.
16. Cost-Per-Click
The cost-per-click or CPC metric measures the amount of money you pay for every click.
This metric is usually used in PPC campaigns, be it through social media or Google Ads.
Like the click-through rate KPI, note that this only measures the cost of a click rather than conversions or other types of interactions, so it can become a vanity metric if misinterpreted.
17. Cost-Per-Conversion
Your cost-per-conversion reveals a lot of information about your campaign.
Simply put, this statistic measures the amount of money you pay for each conversion and, if you have all the appropriate information, it can be applied to landing pages, paid ads, or any other channel you use to generate leads.
18. Cost-Per-Acquisition (Customer Acquisition Cost)
In some cases, the cost-per-conversion and cost-per-acquisition metrics are calculated using the same formula.
That said, there can be a major difference.
Cost-per-acquisition (can also be called customer acquisition cost), which can also be known as cost-per-sale and cost-per-installation, is used to find out how much each paying customer is costing you.
- More helpful reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/customer-acquisition-cost-what-is-cac/
Conversions, on the other hand, can consist of either sales or leads.
If you consider a lead as a conversion, you should also focus on acquisition costs because not all leads will become customers.
19. ROI
Just like conversion rate, the return-on-income KPI, simply known as ROI, has become an extremely important metric.
It measures how much money you make for every dollar you spend.
Note that this metric has been around for a while, but it has become one of the most important digital marketing KPIs for all types of campaigns.
20. Number of Qualified Leads Generated
While percentages are crucial, the sheer volume of leads generated will define just how successful and scalable your campaigns are.
Now, the number of leads needed to achieve marketing success will depend on the size of your company and your expectations, so remember to adjust this metric to your specific case.
21. Customer Lifetime Value
In order to find out the customer lifetime value (CLV), you have to look at your current metrics.
In simple terms, the CLV helps you understand how much money you can make from every customer beyond the first purchase.
Remember, most customer lifetime value calculators adjust the lifetime value to 12 months. If this period is shorter or longer, you should make the right adjustments to get an accurate customer lifetime value reading.
22. Organic Keywords
The only way to measure your SEO marketing success is by measuring a set of unpaid promotion metrics, including the organic keywords in your landing pages.
The organic keywords of your pages tell you which terms are driving website traffic
. Additionally, it also tells you whether or not you’re ranking for keywords relevant to your industry.
23. Keyword SERPs Positions
Knowing which keywords you’re ranking for is a good start, but where do you rank for each one? And, which landing pages is the website traffic being funneled to? The keyword search engine ranking pages (SERPs) positions tell you exactly that.
This, combined with KPIs like conversion rate and customer-acquisition-cost can give you valuable information to optimize your pages for SEO.
24. Social Reach
A social media strategy is now an essential component of every successful promotion mix. But, out of all the crucial KPIs you should follow, social reach is one of the most complex.
This is because there is no set way to gauge social reach. In simple terms, social reach measures the number of users that may have contact with your content.
Impressions are a big part but they don’t tell the full story, so you need to choose a tracking platform that measures reach through the social media channels that are most relevant to you.
In addition to the social media channels available, you should also evaluate how your tracker of choice calculates reach through the different networks. The best formula will depend on your goals, so don’t be afraid to search for a tool until you’re satisfied with your choice.
25. Brand Mentions and Overall Reputation
Brand mentions can occur through social media or on any page. As the name suggests, this metric measures the number of times your brand has been mentioned by name.
You can use specific tools to perform manual searches or set up Google Alerts to get automatic notifications whenever a mention is detected.
Your overall reputation is essential to the success of your brand, but there are many elements that influence this notion.
Granted it’s not a set metric, you need to monitor review sites, Google Maps reviews, and other platforms that your customers use to find businesses in their areas.
How to Measure Metrics in Your Campaign
The measuring and tracking process is unique for every business, especially if these companies opt for platforms other than Google Analytics.
- More Helpful Reading: https://www.fannit.com/blog/seo-google-analytics-tips/
Some of the general steps you should keep in mind include:
- Start by setting your goals
- Ensure that your tracking platform provides the data you need
- Create a KPI analysis and content optimization schedule
- Define the success factors for your business and the metrics that are tied to them
- Develop a standardized metrics assessment method
Want to Develop a Metrics-Based Online Promotion Campaign? Fannit Is Here to Help
Tracking, monitoring, and interpreting your marketing metrics is essential for success.
That said, learning to understand your website traffic analytics can take a significant amount of time, especially if you’re using comprehensive tools like Google Analytics.
Fortunately, you don’t have to take on this challenge on your own.
At Fannit, we have extensive experience helping all types of companies increase their website traffic through organic and paid strategies.
To learn more about working with Fannit to achieve predictable digital marketing success, get in touch with us today.
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