Measuring your online marketing
Introduction
There is a wide range of online marketing tactics that you can use for your business, such as websites, emails, pay-per-click advertising, social media, mobile advertising and affiliate marketing.
In order to get the best from your online marketing, you must understand how your customers interact with you, and how they use digital media. The best results will be achieved through an integrated approach to online marketing, using a number of different online channels that best match your customers’ behaviour.
This guide explains about online metrics, and how you can measure the effectiveness of different online media in order to decide which tactics, or combination of tactics, is right for your business.
Benefits of measuring your digital marketing
When developing an online marketing strategy, there is a wealth of data available to you. This data is often detailed and immediately accessible. However, as not all of the data will be necessarily useful, you need to know what to measure and how to use it to make informed decisions about your online marketing.
What you will need to measure will be determined by a number of factors, including:
which online channels you choose to use
how these channels sit in the overall customer journey – eg are they most effective for awareness, acquisition or conversion objectives
what you are looking to achieve with your online marketing – eg increased sales, increased visits to your website, online registrations or downloads, etc
You should also consider the relationship between online and other marketing activities as well as your wider business objectives.
Key metrics
It’s important to measure different kinds of online activity. For example, you could measure:
the number of pages viewed per visit on your website
how long visitors stay on the site
what kind of keyword searches and referrals are used
the number and cost of advertising clicks through to your site
Consistent measuring across different online channels will help you attribute value to different tactics.
Key benefits
These measurements will allow you to:
use your digital marketing budget efficiently
make sales activity more effective by improving your conversion rates
choose the right channels to reach your target audience
make more effective campaign decisions
improve your return on investment