9 Marketing Metrics You Should Know

Tell me.

That last content piece you posted, is it answerable to any marketing metrics?

How many, and why?

Can’t remember?

Given how ferocious your target audience probably is for more content, it’s understandable when marketers lose track of their marketing metrics and KPIs.

But unless you consistently track and monitor your efforts, there is no point investing time, money, and effort if you cannot talk about the ROI it is delivering.

Below are the top marketing metric every marketer needs to know and use. They will give you a holistic picture of what your effort is gaining your business, and how you can redirect your efforts to create content that will matter and deliver results.

#1 Bounce Rate

First impressions matter, and if your home page or the content you just shared does not hook the visitor, they will leave. If they do so immediately, that’s a bounce.

And if the ratio of percentage of people visiting your website and bouncing is high, it can mean one of four things:

• Your website is not loading fast enough
• Your website design is all wrong (is too cluttered, or has too many pop ups or is not responsive)
• People can’t figure out the navigation (the next step they must take on the site), or
• Your content is not relevant or valuable (which means that either it is ranking for the wrong keywords, or it has a week introduction)

So, it’s not just the people who stay on your website that matters, it’s also those that rocket off. Bounce rate lets you know if the situation is in balance (lower ratio), or going apocalyptic (higher ratio).

If you need help with your website design to keep people on the page, click here.

#2 Time Spent on Site

How valuable is your content?

More importantly, how valuable is your overall marketing campaign? Identify this by tracking the time spent by visitors on your website.

Once you have created, published, and promoted the content, traffic will come into your website. The time spent reading your content is a clear indication that readers found it valuable enough to share the scarcest resource they have in their lives (their time).

Additionally, time on site also indicates the page-depth your website offers. If your content offers a healthy number of relevant internal links, people will spend time reading that content as well. This can also indicate the relevancy of those internal links (using the time individually spent on those content pieces).

While tracking time spent on website, also track the entry and exit points for the visitor. On aggregate, this gives you a better idea of the most valuable and least valuable content you have on the site.

#3 Qualified Leads

Everyone wants valuable content — content that makes a difference by entertaining, informing, or educating readers.
And so, every valuable content when properly promoted and shared will generate traffic to your website. Traffic is meaningless and additional load on your web servers if it is not filtering or qualifying leads.

Your marketing content is supposed to do more than simply attract people (generate traffic and potential leads). It must also convince them of your business’s relevancy and convert them into qualified leads.

Remember, revenue is not simply a numbers game. More traffic does not mean higher revenues. More qualified and quality traffic means more revenue. So focus on the number of leads that your content is actually qualifying.

#4 Lead Percentage: Paid vs. Organic

Unless you’re inspired Copyblogger and willing to pluck up the grit to create valuable content every single time, your marketing will be divided between paid and organic reach.

Hence, you must see which of the two channels is working out for you so that you can channel your budget and resources towards the right method or both.

Categorise all your marketing efforts into either paid or organic marketing:

• Paid marketing — This include’s any marketing effort that resulted in a lead that required paying someone other than your employees e.g. sponsored content, PPC, social ads, etc.
• Organic Marketing — This includes the leads that you were able to generate only through inhouse content marketing efforts such as blogging, social media, email marketing, and SEO. You may include third party content creators as part of your content creation team.

So why is the ratio important?

Your goal is to make yourself more self-sustaining, be able to achieve higher leads through content and efforts that you alone control i.e. organic marketing. A higher percentage of organic leads means that you have created content that required a onetime effort (with minor scheduled maintenance) and which will consistently generate backlinks and leads in the future. In this case paid marketing works as a competitive advantage to give you greater visibility amidst competitors.

A higher percentage of paid marketing means that your business is either not able to create valuable content for your target audience, or has create content that is not relevant to your business (e.g. it is not targeting the right keywords, or is not targeting every stage of your customer’s buying journey and hence losing them to competitors.)

Use this metric to scale your business towards the right marketing efforts.

Check out our Pay Per Click services here.

#5 Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate is arguably the most important metric for a business.

It is a direct measure of the effectiveness of your overall marketing campaign. Ideally, every lead that calls in for your service/product should be worked and converted into a sale.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in this world.

And your marketing Daredevils must assess their efforts in terms of the leads they are able to convert. Because if you are not converting the leads that you have qualified, your whole marketing effort (for that one lead) is a waste.

#6 Customer Acquisition Cost

This is probably the most important of the marketing metrics.

How much are you spending on acquiring one customer?

The lower your acquisition cost, the more effective your marketing content. Find the cost of acquiring a single customer by adding up your total marketing costs for the duration of the current campaign (overhead and salaries included) and divide it by the number of customers you have acquired during the given time.

This will show you the effectiveness of your overall marketing and sales efforts.

Additionally, find the cost of acquiring leads (lead acquisition cost LAC) by dividing the net marketing cost with the number of qualified leads you have gained. Compare the cost of acquiring leads with the cost of acquiring customers to see the punctures in your marketing/sales funnel.

Higher LAC: CAC ratio may indicate that there is too much friction before the point of sales where as a lower one would indicate a problem in the marketing funnel.

#7 Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)/ Cost Of Customer Acquisition (CAC) Ratio

Your business’s growth and sustainability is dependent on the size of your customer base. These are the customers that your competition does not have, as yet.

AS. YET.

That is important because it takes a lot more effort to retain existing customers than acquiring them in the first place. This is where the CLV:CAC ratio steps in to give you a sense of your business sustainability.

Your task is to find ways to increase the value of this ration by increasing the lifetime value of the customer (increasing the number of purchases they make over their lifetime) while reducing their acquisition costs.

#8 Number of Comments

Social engagement is crucial to building a strong customer base.

How do you know the level of engagement you are receiving from the posts that you have shared? Likes? Retweets? Pins?

These don’t matter. Well, not to your revenue because most people simply share content without actually reading through it.

A comment on the other hand gives you an idea how people found your content piece, and also creates space for engaging with them through the comments.

Your blog’s comments are the most important ones here because (don’t laugh) to reach them the reader actually has to scroll the length of the post. That in itself is time enough to hook skimmers through powerful headlines and images.

Social comments are also important as it allows you to see what people are saying. It shows their reaction to the post, which in itself is a success metric.

#9 Your Net Promoter Score (NPM)

How often are your customer referring your brand to their friends? This is what the NPS is about: an indicator of your brand’s traction through word of mouth marketing. It’s a metric that tracks your brand mentions and shares to give you a more holistic picture of your brands progress.

It gives you greater insights into the effectiveness of your influencer outreach program and whether you need to invest in it or not.

Marketing Metrics Conclusion

No content marketing strategy is complete without the presence of a consolidated list of marketing metrics to measure its success. The above nine marketing metrics are among the most powerful and insightful metrics, and by incorporating them into your strategy (or better yet, building your strategy around them) you will be able to streamline your efforts and gain greater control over your decisions.

Are you a bit lost on where to start?  Just give me a call on my number below or leave a comment below and I will answer it personally.

Check out this page on Digital marketing strategy if you need help.