5 Invaluable Marketing Metrics for Business Growth
It can be daunting looking at Google Analytics or your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system and deciphering what you should and should not be monitoring. Some metrics are simply meaningless and will add no value to your marketing plan, while others are vital.
So what are the vital stat’s you need to follow? Which will give you the best insight into your customers? And which will help you to make smarter marketing decisions?
There are an abundance of metrics you can find in your analytics system from web visits, to conversions, page views and abandoned baskets to customer complaints, inbound calls, sales revenue and social media following.
Joining up metrics and interactions can give you a more accurate view of your success and failures and can flag problems, e,g: if your abandoned shopping cart rate is high and your inbound calls are high perhaps they are linked.
Here I discuss five metrics which are vital to any business that wants to grow. The metrics I highlighted are from online activity but can be used to analyse offline customer actions as well.
1. Sources of the traffic to your website
Web users find your website via various sources; some may be from search engines, others from referrals like directories or links. Others will be familiar with your website and business so will come direct.
Tracking the highest portion of visits from each channel is an effective way of seeing what marketing is working. For example; if you have a high rate of direct traffic over organic traffic then the people coming to your site already are aware of your business name or URL. What about the hundreds who are unaware? For example, if organic and referral visits are low in comparison to direct traffic, it would be a good idea to invest more in these channels with SEO and link building to boost traffic.
What you should be aiming for are all channels performing well at not only bringing in traffic but also driving leads and conversions.
2. New & Returning Visitors
You can segment your visitors not just by source but also if they are new to your website or returning. Usually you expect to see a higher number of new visitors than returning. But too many new visitors and not enough returning visitors can be an indication that your website is not ‘sticky enough’. By this I mean your site does not attract repeat visits.
Businesses who have sell higher value or more complicated services tend to see more return visitors as they need to be assured of the purchase. If this describes your business and return visits are low with even poorer engagement and conversion metrics then you might have a problem.
There are many reasons why visitors might not come back to your site; cost, product confusion, uninformative content or you’re simply not what they’re looking for. A low proportion of visits can also indicate the usefulness of your website. Ideally you want people to come back to your site and see your new offers, deals and products as often as possible.
If viewers are not returning you need to take a second look at your website. Ensure that you provide an excellent user experience by offering easy to use navigation as well as useful and compelling landing page content. Make the experience something and that they cannot find elsewhere.
3. Visitor Conversion
Setting up goal locations in Google Analytics is an absolute must for any business’ website. Not only does the goals report tell you that conversions are taking place, but you can also access valuable data such as where the goals are taking place and, perhaps even more importantly, which sales or service pages aren’t driving conversions at all.
Where landing pages aren’t driving conversions, it’s usually a good indication that you need to amend your landing page content to encourage action. It could be that your calls to action aren’t in a prominent place, or even that you’re not providing your customers with their preferred method of contact, like a telephone number. We know that even in the digital age consumers still prefer to contact a business over the phone, with research showing that inbound phone calls are 10-15 times more likely to convert than web leads.
What’s more, a business with a phone number is far more likely to generate even more purchases. For example, a recent etailer call tracking case study published by call tracking software company Mediahawk showed how website visitors who called the retailers affected purchase rates. It was found that customers who call are more likely to purchase and the longer the prospect spent on the phone the more they are likely to spend. Those consumers who called spent longer looking at the website, and looked at on an average 30% more pages!
The lesson here is that more interaction with the consumers and providing more than one way to get in touch with you aids sales. The more you engage the user the more likely they are to buy. Displaying a prominent phone number might help to keep a potential buyer in the sales funnel.
4. Top Converting Landing Pages
Creating ways in which your customers can interact with your website increases helps to you’re your customers engaged and can lead to a sale.
You can leverage these interactions by starting a social media group, asking for product reviews or set competitions to share a product or page. A good example of this is Amazon, who allow visitors to select items for a wish list then share this on social media direct from the Amazon.co.uk website. You can also share your purchases via the same means.
5. Cost Per Conversion
Congratulation your conversion rate is growing rapidly, but at what cost?
It pays to calculate how much each customer is worth. If you gage an average spend value and use this to see how much return you are getting for the effort you put in. Clickz has published a helpful CPA Calculator which could show you how much spend it takes to get a conversion – and whether you’re paying too much to get them!
Take this example scenario: you are getting more customers but your AdWords bill is rising and the customer purchases barely cover it. This suggests that you may be over spending on your Google AdWords campaign and you need to re-evaluate your campaigns for better keywords, more relevant positioning and even perhaps an alternative marketing medium which is a more manageable cost for the same result.
Summary
These are not your only metrics you should be monitoring. Others include number of email complaints, number of Facebook/ Twitter and Instagram followers, the number of social media followers who convert to customers, number of inbound calls and many more. Using two to three metrics for each goal should provide a clear picture of areas of success and areas that need work to achieve your goals.
