Just because you feel better, doesn’t mean you are better. Often a circumstance may boost our confidence, but later we realize we are not where we truly want to be in life. This is especially true in digital marketing, where numerous factors can impact your success. In order to effectively assess your impact, you must evaluate your strategies and marketing model. The simple way to do this is to use feedback and data as a measurement tool. This information will assist in developing more efficient and effective digital marketing strategies.
Again, in life we may find ourselves asking, “Why am I here?” or “What is my purpose?” These questions can also apply to your business, branding, and webpage. It’s imperative to determine the goals, direction, and objectives for your digital marketing. On a personal level, we may measure ourselves by how much we weigh, our income, closeness in relationships, or value of our possessions. When everything is going smoothly, life is good. At times, everything may feel like a disaster, and each aspect of our measurement can affect the other components.
In digital marketing, it is difficult to improve when you don’t have a thorough point of reference, and you may miss how one component is impacting another crucial piece of your marketing strategy. Just like in your personal life, don’t count on how you feel, or simply seeing your project as either a success or failure. It’s important to measure and evaluate each component in order to improve your tactics and future success.
Prior to your marketing campaign, it is imperative to set goals and objectives to define success for your company. The goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, results-focused, and have a definite time frame. This is often coined as a “smart” goal, and can be used for any goal in life, professional or personal. For your marketing campaign, it is important to start with “smart goals” in order to have a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Smart goals establish the components so you can measure accurately. Smart Insights has a helpful guide for digital marketing companies to not only set smart goals, but to move to “Smarter goals,” in which you can evaluate and revaluate your objectives.
What to Measure
Digital marketing analytics can expand into hundreds and hundreds of categories and specific aspects to measure. First, your smart goals should help narrow down what key components will be most beneficial to measure and evaluate. It is imperative to set objectives and measure them efficiently to have data driven results and improvements. In addition to the specific objectives you set, it is often suggested you measure some basics for your website.
- Website visitors – This is the basic number of people who visit your website. Ideally, this number will consistently increase with time. There are other options you may want to measure along with number of visitors, such as if they are coming from another website, media link, email subscription, or directly to the website.
- Amount of time spent on the website – Are visitors spending a significant amount of time, or is your website a quick click and exit? This can provide helpful insight to barriers or successes in the ease of navigating the website.
- Click-thru rate – Measuring visitors versus customers based on final outcomes. What components are converting a visitor to the site into a customer or client, where they have fulfilled the target of the marketing goal? In addition, you can measure how many are returning customers and how many new customers are coming to the website.
These are simple measurements with which you can begin, in addition to measuring more in-depth for the specific objectives set by the marketing campaign. Also, each category can expand and have multiple facets to explore and evaluate. Although simple, these measurements are beneficial for a small business or new blog, and applicable to a large corporation or multi-level marketing campaign.
Measurement Tools to Use
After setting your intentions, it’s important to use the right tools to measure and evaluate. Along with objectives and goals, you also need to consider your resources and how in-depth you need to go to get accurate measurements. There are multiple tools to measure digital marketing campaigns, from the simple to complex. Additionally, you will want to factor in the cost associated with the tools you select.
The most common tool is Google Analytics, which has multiple tools for data collection and reporting at no cost. This is a great tool for an individual or smaller company, as the comparison key maps out the benefits of this tool. For a larger company with more data collection, and who may want to have more components evaluated, there is Google Analytics 360, which can provide a more thorough analysis. This service isn’t free, but claims to improve sales significantly. It could be beneficial to start with Google Analytics and become familiar with additional measurement tools. Convince and Convert has a helpful guide into basic measurement tools in Google Analytics. They outline the What, Why, and How for measurement tools in digital marketing.
Smart Insights also has resources, such as this list of 10 free online marketing tools if you are seeking insight and improvement without additional spending. The tools to measure and evaluate your marketing campaign can be advanced, with specific tools designed for a targeted goal. When selecting the tool or tools that are right for your goals, it is important to go back to the objectives you have set.
How to Keep Measurements Simple, Create Momentum, and See Change
The goal is not to simply measure and evaluate, but create momentum and improve processing. Once you have tools in place, the data may seem overwhelming. There are some tips and tricks to making measurement tools work for you and your company. First, have a plan to use the data you collect to improve your digital marketing campaign. Measurement tools give you information, but you have to use that to your advantage.
Always go back to your primary objective when looking at data. It is also imperative to communicate across your team, which is why many companies, large and small, use Google Drive to collect, share, and store the data they have from the tools they choose to use. The cost depends on the size and amount of data you desire, so it can be free if you keep to a simple measurement tool and few users. Google Drive makes virtual communication easy, and provides a variety of templates for spreadsheets, documents, and files. They are easy to store and access, and can be protected as well.
Measurement tools should ultimately influence how you can improve, and provide a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses. Along with evaluation tools, you may want to consider a survey tool to better understand the consumer. SurveyMonkey and SurveyGizmo are two popular tools, with free options, along with price-based options depending on the size and scale of your questionnaire and usage. Surveys are a great tool to add to basic marketing measurement tools. All in all, whatever you measure, and however you measure it, the goal is to improve and expand the reach of your marketing campaign. You may focus on email subscriptions or incentivize the consumer, just ensure your processes improve and support the primary goal you’ve set.
What is your experience with measuring marketing data? Do you have favorite tools you love to use? Why not share them with us in the comments? We would love to hear your thoughts and learn some tips you use to successfully measure and analyze marketing data.