Most marketing metrics aren’t essential to your growth. Reaching the best goals demands measuring something specific. Using the right metrics helps you achieve these goals, avoid analysis paralysis and shorten your path to success.
Which metrics do you need?
What are marketing metrics?
Marketing metrics are numbers or information you monitor to measure your marketing success. They reveal how well you’re leading your audiences to take actions that generate value.
1 – Traffic Sources
Smart marketers have always asked customers: “How did you find me?” Traffic sources are simply other websites leading people to find your website.
Some of these sources are Google, Facebook, TikTok, or even a referral link from a partner’s website.
Growth Badger studied 3.25 billion website visits. While Google is often the biggest source of visitors, it varies by industry. Health and medical sites get, on average, 87.85% of their traffic from Google. While crypto sites only get 45.74% of their visitors from Google.
How much traffic does Google give you? Do you get more visitors from ads or did they click on a search listing?
Specific data is best. Google Analytics can show you phrases (keywords) people searched for when they came to your site.
Knowing your traffic sources allows you to prioritize which marketing channels to focus on.
2 – Engagement
Engagement means getting people to interact with you. Measure this with Instagram likes, TikTok video views, as well as opens or clicks inside your emails.
Use your engagement numbers to answer questions like:
- How often and at what time of day should you post to social media or send emails?
- Which of your content gets the least and best reactions?
- Where should you focus your marketing?
You might get more TikTok viewers at 10 AM but on Facebook at 5 PM. Knowing people’s habits and preferences can vastly improve your marketing.
3 – Time on Site
How long do people spend watching your videos or reading your blog posts? This is closely connected with bounce rate – the number of people who leave your site after a few seconds.
Why should you know your average time on site? This reveals how interested people are in your content and whether you’re attracting the right kind of people. If people leave immediately, they didn’t find what they were looking for.
Google uses this number to rank your site. Time on site also affects conversions and sales. People need enough time to be convinced before they buy.
Time on site is usually several minutes for good content. More content and more regular posting usually help. Talk about your subject more thoroughly to be seen as an expert.
Make your content more compelling with specific examples, numbers, illustrations, and copywriting techniques. Adjust your traffic sources and ads to promote your content more.
4 – Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
This is the amount of money you need to spend to get a customer. Getting free customers is a marketing myth. Spending less money means investing more time.
Know your cost. This is the only way to correctly judge the success of your marketing campaigns and set future budgets.
5 – Returning Visitors
Software like Google Analytics can tell you how many people are returning to your website after their first visit. When visitors buy or give you their email, you can often tie this data to each of their visits.
Knowing this metric is very helpful when calculating your customer lifetime value.
6 – Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
CLV means how much money customers are likely to spend with you during their lifetime. You can’t judge this by their first purchase. Many extremely profitable businesses only break even or lose money on a buyer’s first purchase.
This number measures your customer loyalty and is essential to deciding your marketing budget. How do you measure it?
How many repeat customers and returning visitors do you have? This helps you calculate the average number of purchases your customers will make. Average purchase price multiplied by the average number of purchases equals customer lifetime value.
7 – Brand Equity
Brand equity is the financial value in people’s perception of your brand. It’s not your product price.
This shows how you compare with others in your industry. It tells whether you should raise your prices and by how much.
You can buy handbags for $20 or less. Yet Chanel sells their “Diamond Forever” bag for $260,000. While you can buy a Chanel bag for a few hundred dollars, Chanel’s lowest retail price is $3800 and people gladly pay this.
If you’re selling handbags, how do people feel about your product versus Chanel’s handbags? This metric can change quickly, so watch it closely. Improve your brand equity by increasing your brand awareness.
Marketing metrics examples
Until you test, you won’t know which content works best or where your best audience is. Instead of guessing before investing time and effort into a blog post, why not try different subjects on various social platforms? See which content succeeds by the number of likes and shares.
You can also find subjects that get more searches on Google where it’s possible to rank, given your resources.
Then, create a blog post, video, or podcast about it. Check traffic sources, engagement, time on site, and conversions: basically, the number of people who take the desired action.
These digital marketing measurements help you write emails and ads to promote your best content. Judge your marketing campaigns and set budgets using your customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value.
Refine your promotions and content by continuing to check your engagement.
What do these marketing metrics mean for you?
The right marketing metrics are essential to setting and achieving goals. Goals bring clarity. Clarity brings confidence. Confidence brings success.
