In today’s data-driven world of digital marketing, numbers reign supreme. But are you truly fluent in the language of metrics and KPIs? Or do you sometimes feel lost with all the acronyms like CTR, CPC, and CVR?
Don’t worry, you’re not alone if you’ve felt overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the different digital marketing metrics out there. But having a solid grasp of what they actually measure – and what those numbers signify for your business – is absolutely essential.
Luckily, demystifying these metrics is well within reach. Let’s break it down step-by-step and ensure you can confidently analyze the data that matters most.
Why Digital Marketing Metrics Matter
Before we get into specific metrics, let’s quickly discuss why you should even care about measuring digital marketing performance. In short? Driving results.
You’re investing valuable time and money into online advertising, SEO, social media content, email campaigns, and other digital initiatives. But if you aren’t closely tracking the returns from those efforts, you’ll just be shooting blindly into the void.
Hard metrics give you the insights to:
– Identify which tactics are working (and which aren’t)
– Make data-backed decisions to optimize your budgets
– Prove real business value from your marketing investments
– Continuously improve performance over time
Without the Numbers as your guide, you’re essentially gambling away your digital marketing spend based on hunches and guesses. And just hoping for the best is no way to maximize your impact and ROI.
Becoming familiar with comprehending common metrics – what they indicate and how you can leverage them – is a superpower for any modern marketer. Let’s explore some of the biggest ones you’ll want to get familiar with.
Major Metrics to Track Acquisition Sources
First up, there are metrics around driving new user acquisition through your various digital marketing channels:
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): This measures how much money you’re spending to acquire each new customer or conversion. For example, if you paid $1,000 for advertising that generated 100 sales, your CPA would be $10. Platforms such as Google Ads (below), may refer to other forms of the phrase CPA i.e. Cost Per Conversion.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): What percentage of ad viewers are actually clicking through to your website or landing page? The higher the CTR, the more effective your messaging is at grabbing attention.
Cost Per Click (CPC): How much you’re paying for each click generated from a specific paid campaign or channel.
If you want to evaluate which acquisition sources are most cost-efficient for acquiring new business, these numbers will be incredibly insightful. Maybe your CPA on Facebook ads is significantly higher than on Google Ads. That signals room for optimization.
Perhaps channels like influencers or email have very high CTRs at a relatively low CPC. Those should likely be areas to increase investment.
Beyond just the numbers themselves, you’ll also want to analyze these metrics by segment: which geographic regions, demographics, devices, etc. are yielding the most favorable and scalable acquisition stats across your advertising efforts?
Watching closely for positive or negative outliers to double down on or correct is essential. As you find opportunities to improve metrics like CPA and CTR over time, you can use optimization tactics like A/B testing ads, updating audience targeting, adjusting budgets fluidly between channels, and so on.
Metrics for Nurturing User Engagement
Even after acquiring new leads or customers, growing user engagement and loyalty is an ongoing process. Here are key metrics that can shed light on how well you’re nurturing those crucial relationships:
Time on Site (Average Engagement Time): Are people sticking around and consuming your content? If so, that indicates the value they’re deriving. But minimal time on site could signal issues with grabbing interest.
Pages Per Session (Views Per Session): Similarly, a higher number of page views per user session likely means you’re effectively guiding visitors along a content journey on your website or app.
Returning Visitors: What percentage of your web traffic consists of repeat visitors rather than totally new prospects? More repeat visits can suggest stickiness and having reasons for users to return.
Email Open/Click Rates: For email newsletters and nurture sequences, these metrics highlight how effectively you’re getting your message in front of subscribers and persuading opens and clicks.
By establishing benchmarks for metrics like these, you can work on developing optimization workflows when things slip below your typical standards. Maybe you need to refine the structure and CTAs of certain site pages. Or prioritize list hygiene practices on your email list. Or focus more on providing frequent and helpful content updates.
The point is, dips in these engagement metrics provide an “air raid” signal — telling you immediately that there’s an issue that needs fixing in your engagement and nurturing funnel before people detach entirely.
Revenue and Conversion Metrics
Ultimately of course, many digital marketing efforts are anchored towards generating leads and driving sales conversions. Having visibility into metrics related to conversions and revenue generation is crucial for aligning your marketing spend with ROI:
Form Submissions: While not a direct revenue generator, lead capture form submissions can be a critical “top funnel” metric for keeping your prospect pipeline healthy.
Conversion Rate: What percentage of website visitors are actually taking a desired conversion action, like requesting a quote, downloading a content offer, making a purchase, or signing up for a free trial?
Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate: For any e-commerce business, shopping cart abandonments are a huge missed opportunity. The higher this rate, the more revenue you’re likely leaving on the table.
Average Order Value (AOV): An important e-commerce metric, AOV measures how much revenue you’re generating per transaction on average. Higher AOVs tend to signal successful cross-selling and up-selling campaigns.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): How much total revenue a single customer contributes across their entire lifespan with your business. Improving CLV requires strong customer loyalty and retention efforts.
A myriad of campaign optimization strategies can improve these conversion metrics — from refining checkout processes and cart recovery systems to building better remarketing campaigns and loyalty programs.
But without closely measuring these metrics, you won’t know where to focus those efforts. Do shoppers seem to be abandoning carts at a certain point in checkout? Maybe there’s a technical issue or lack of payment options you need to address. Seeing a drop in AOV? Perhaps your product bundles and promotions need refreshing.
Constantly monitoring these revenue indicators empowers you to take informed action before problems escalate and have major impacts on your bottom line.
Looking Holistically Across the Marketing Funnel
So far we’ve explored digital metrics grouped roughly by section of the marketing funnel: acquisition, user engagement, and conversions/revenue.
But experienced marketers will emphasize the importance of not siloing those clusters of metrics. A more holistic perspective that looks across the entire customer journey can reveal powerful synergies.
For example, maybe you notice that certain demographics who engage well with one particular acquisition channel (like influencers) also exhibit higher-than-average customer lifetime value after converting. That’s a clear indicator to double down on those influencers for future campaign optimization.
Or you may spot cyclical trends between engagement metrics and conversion stats. Perhaps social media content releases correspond with temporary spikes in website traffic and purchases. Optimizing the timing and themes of those social campaigns could drive even bigger revenue bumps.
Digital marketing tactics tend to be most powerful when they work in unison and have compounding effects across each stage of the funnel. That’s why comprehending metrics in a vacuum only tells part of the story.
The real game-changing insights often come from spotting the interplays and cascading impacts between different portions of your marketing engine. Which channels feed which segments? How does engagement influence retention and loyalty? Finding the hidden links and codependencies buried in your data is where optimization opportunities truly emerge.
Unlocking Your Inner Data Expert
Feeling overwhelmed trying to become a digital marketing metrics wizard? That’s totally understandable. There’s no shortage of jargon and numbers to keep track of in this space.
But don’t get discouraged. The most important first step is simply developing an analytical, data-driven mindset when it comes to judging your digital marketing performance and ROI.
Start with a small handful of metrics that align most directly with your immediate priorities. Master reading and interpreting those inside and out. Then slowly expand your comfort zone to monitor some secondary KPIs. Stay curious, ask questions, and carve out regular habits around diving into the numbers.
Over time, you’ll find yourself progressively getting more fluent and quantitatively confident.
Because at the end of the day, that’s what this metrics journey unlocks: the ability to make smarter, more nimble, more ROI-driven decisions about where to invest your digital marketing efforts based on proof rather than guesswork.
By pinning down those key performance indicators and staying hungry to enhance your analytical power, you’ll empower yourself to perpetually optimize your marketing engine for maximum revenue growth. Contact the team at Relevant Audience to start mastering this.
