Practical Tips For Measuring Marketing Performance

In this post, we will discuss some things you can use for measuring marketing effectiveness and performance.

You have probably heard the statistic about not being able to measure what doesn’t get measured.
To measure your goals, the first step is to define your key performance indicators (KPIs). Many marketers don’t know which KPIs they should measure, how to measure them and how often they should measure their KPIs.

Develop Meaningful Marketing Goals

Suppose you are looking for some specific marketing metrics to measure.
In that case, it helps if you have done your homework by first identifying what key measurement factors are most valuable to you.

Metrics (Key Performance Indicators – KPIs) that measure the effectiveness of marketing channels will help you identify where your marketing efforts are best focused.
For example, how many customers are acquired through organic search versus paid search? How much more effective is content marketing compared with email campaigns?
If you measure these things – and track improvements over time – it becomes easier for everyone within.

Here are some of the most common goals:

  • Brand Awareness
  • Sales
  • Customer Acquisition
  • Lead Generation
  • Engagement
  • Customer Retention/Loyalty
  • Website Traffic
  • Repeat Clients and Website Visitors

Set Up Performance Measurement Tools

Digital marketing efforts are Internet-based. Therefore you have access to accurate and detailed information about how your campaigns perform.
Here are a few of the tools that can help measure campaign performance:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most powerful marketing performance measurement tools, and signing up is free. Your company should sign up for GA even if you’re also using other tools.

Google Search Console

Another valuable tool from Google is Google Search Console (GSC). This free tool helps track your site’s SEO performance.

In GSC, you can check to make sure Google has crawled and indexed your sites, which is necessary for showing up in search results.

Other Analytics Tools

There’s a massive range of other marketing analytics tools available for you to try out.
Some focus on a specific marketing channel, like social media or email, and others offer more varied functionality.

Check Your Website Analytics

Your website is the hub of your marketing efforts, and to measure its effectiveness, you need to measure how well it performs in bringing in visitors and converting them.

There are hundreds of reasons for each visit to your site, but you should measure how many people end up becoming customers or clients to measure the value of your marketing efforts.
You should measure the changes in your website traffic over time, but keep an eye out for significant increases or decreases outside of the average trends.

There are hundreds of measurable metrics – here are 9 for you:

  • How many visitors are coming to your website, and how is that changing over time (for example, week to week vs. month to month)?
  • Which marketing sources are generating the highest volume of traffic to your site? 
  • What percentage of new visitors come from organic search versus paid advertising campaigns?
  • What country does most of your traffic come from?
  • How many new and repeat visitors are you gaining?
  • How many of your visitors are from mobile vs. desktop devices?
  • What are your most popular pages?
  • What is the average time spent per page or session?
  • What days of the week generate the most traffic?

Better Data, Better Decisions

Once you’ve established your marketing goals, metrics, and tools, start tracking your metrics. Evaluate your progress regularly and adjust your strategies as needed. For some projects, such as pay-per-click ad campaigns, you’ll track performance only for the campaign’s duration. For other projects, such as SEO, continuous tracking is required. Track metrics relevant to your campaign and keep records of your progress to improve your strategies continually. Over time, this process will help you grow your business and achieve your overall business goals.