In this wonderfully digital modern world, marketing is constantly changing, becoming infinitely more accountable and trackable. Marketing managers now have reams of statistics and information at their fingertips, thanks to loads of cool reporting and analytics software offered by a whole selection of providers. I’ve highlighted some statistics that I feel are some of the most important to take into consideration when reviewing your marketing material.
- Google Analytics: Users – There’s SO much information in Google Analytics that it can often be overwhelming, however a lot of it is incredibly useful when learning about how your customers use your website and where they are coming from. It’s unlikely that these figures are absolutely bang on correct, but give a good indication into what’s going on with your site. ‘Users’ is how many unique visitors you’ve had on your website in that time period. It’s the best indication of actual traffic and tracking individual people on the website, rather than recording how many times someone has visited your site.
Facebook: Engagement – This little golden nugget can be found by clicking on your likes when logged into your Facebook account. No matter how many likes you have on Facebook, it’s the amount of engagement that actually matters. Who are you reaching out to? How effective are your messages? Are you reaching people beyond your fans/likers? Engagement actually gives you a realistic idea of how effective your Facebook marketing is, and how people have responded to your updates. Keep an eye on shares, comments and likes for awareness building, whilst ‘post clicks’ can be a good indication of where potential sales have come from. It’s good practice to check this week by week, to see what’s working in your FB marketing and, more crucially, what isn’t.
- Email Marketing: Open rate – It’s a big toss up between click-through and open-rate here, and it very much depends on your industry. I feel the open-rate just wins at the finish line, as it’s the clearest indication of how successful and engaging your email campaigns are long term. When your open rates are down, you can look at changing the tim
ing, try some A/B testing or have a go at some more enticing subject lines. Alternatively, if your open rates are up it’s a useful exercise to go back into the reports and see why? What have you been writing about recently that’s particularly caught people’s attention?
- Cost Per Click: Adwords – For those of you that dabble in the world of Google Adwords, the cost per click is the main driver to a cost effective ad campaign that is financially viable for your business. It determines how efficient your ads are, so obviously the lower the better, but it’s also important to be generating quality click throughs. Keep a close eye on this, and constantly refresh and improve your ads based on what you’ve experienced so far. Refine your targeting, make the advert better, change the text, make the landing page awesome etc. Constantly ask yourself, why aren’t people engaging with this ad, and how can I improve it?
- Enquiries: You – Enquiries you say? Surely that’s obvious!? The most important part of a marketing strategy is the ability to reflect on what has worked, so the strategy can be refined and the budget can be spent wisely. It’s crucial that all enquiries are recorded, and the potentially customer is asked the question ‘where did you find out about us?’. It’s easy to measure online purchases and contact form entries, but it’s more tricky to record when a phone call comes through. Anyone who answers in-bound calls should be aware that recording where the customer has come from is a top priority. This can then lead to more sales in the long term, as you work out what works and what doesn’t, to reach out to potential customers.
There are lots of other obscure and dubious statistics out there when it comes to digital marketing, but hopefully I’ve covered some of the best ones above. The important thing to remember is that digital marketing can be tracked, tested and reported. If your campaign isn’t working then the answers are often in the stats!
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