How often do you find yourself using the internet? With almost 8 billion people in the world there are approximately 5 billion people using the internet every single day. This number has actually increased since the early 2000’s thanks to the rise of technology. The digital market has changed drastically from when it used to be dominated by AOL, CDs and websites for every business. Today, digital marketing is essential to any successful business, especially in the B2B industry.
There is no doubt that digital marketing has rapidly risen as one of the most effective for business. History has shown that digital marketing was mainly used to push out the content and generate traffic to the site. However, now it has evolved and become more complex due to competition in this field and is now being used as an effective lead generation tool using data-driven decisions. This post will show you the primary KPIs to include your digital marketing dashboard and how to use data to optimize the performance of your digital marketing campaigns.
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Types of Digital Marketing
Digital marketing dashboards encompasses all forms of marketing done through social media, email, or any other type of digital channel that allows businesses to connect with their customers. It is such a vital part of your marketing strategy because you can reach a larger audience and is more cost-effective than traditional marketing mediums.
Website
Your company website is the foundation of your digital marketing strategy. When designing a website, it is important to answer three key questions: What purpose will the site serve? Who are you trying to reach online? What defines the success of your site? Anyone who wants to learn more about your brand should be directed to your company website. Your business cannot survive without a professional-looking and well-designed site that is optimized for mobile devices as well as desktop computers, so you should dedicate the time and effort into creating or redesigning one.
Traffic – Traffic is the number of visitors who visit your website. It is important to keep track of the traffic flow on a daily basis and analyze how they are finding your site using various keywords, search engines, etc. Metrics such as sessions/user, page views/user, and average time on site should be used to continuously improve your website by adding more content or making it easier for visitors.
Engagement – This is the percentage of visitors that take action or interact with your site such as signing up for a newsletter, logging in to an account, etc. Measuring engagement is vital because it shows how your customers feel about the overall experience on your site and if there are any areas that need improvement. According to IMSMarketing, "the average time should ideally be over 1 minute, the pages per session should be over 2, and the bounce rate anywhere between 40-60%".
Location – Analyzing where users come from is valuable data that is beneficial for your business. This data is crucial because it tells you which geographical locations are of interest to your target audience and what forms of marketing are working for you.
Social – Looking at sessions generated from social referrals is important because it gives you a glimpse into how well your social marketing is working for you. If you are paying for ads on social media sites, this data helps determine which campaign is most effective and if there needs to be any adjustments in the future.
Content – Examining the most popular content on your site allows you to see what appeals to your target audience. The content that gets the most attention is then used for future marketing campaigns and designed to generate more of this type of traffic.
Conversions – Conversion is the percentage of users who take action based on a particular campaign. For example, let's look at buying behavior. You can create an email ad that shows the discounted price for all products, and then you will know if it had any conversions after tracking them for 30 days.
Social Media
With nearly 4.5 billion active users on social media, it is important for businesses to use this as a social network for digital marketing purposes. Not only will you be able to hear feedback from your customers online but you can also interact with them and ask them questions to get even more input. Social media is also a good way to find potential customers online. You can target people based on their interests and demographics, which makes advertising more affordable than it would be otherwise. Even if you are going after an audience of millions, each individual you reach out to is a potential customer for your business. It has become an essential tool for businesses of all types. Even if you do not have a brick-and-mortar location, social media can be used as the solution to reach more people online.
Engagement: Measuring the amount of likes, comments, and shares are key to understanding the amount of engagement a post has been receiving. It can also help you gain insight on how your target audience interacts with content or hashtags related to your business.
Content: Along with engagement, tracking which types of posts get the most attention can let you know what people are interested in and what kind of content drives online leads for your business.
Followers: Another important metric when it comes to social media is followers. It tells you how many people are actively following your business online and can be an indicator of success or failure in future campaigns.
Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
Pay-Per-Click campaigns are an effective way to get more leads and sales. The reason they are so popular is because businesses only pay when someone clicks on their link, unlike other forms of advertising where you might have to split your budget into a million different ads in order to reach the same amount of people. It is also great for businesses who are just starting out because they do not have to pay thousands of dollars upfront in order to promote their products or services.
This is why it is so important to track how well your PPC campaigns are doing. You want to know if a certain campaign is getting the most traffic or if you need to change anything in order to get even more exposure online.
Click-Through-Rate: CTR is the percentage of people who have seen your ad and then clicked on it. This is a good way to tell which ads are getting the most attention and which ones need to be changed in some way or another.
Quality Score: Another key metric to keep an eye on is quality score. It tells you how successful your ads are based on the average CTR, impression, ad relevance, and so many other factors that Google uses to determine if your campaign is successful or not.
Search Impression Share: The Search Impression Share is the percentage of time your ad could have been shown versus the number of times it actually was. A higher SEO can help you get more impressions and more clicks to improve your ads.
Bounce Rate: On the other hand, the bounce rate is the percentage of people who have landed on your post and then bounced off of it. The reason this can be important is because it shows how many people are actually taking action and visiting a landing page or going to your website to make a purchase.
Conversions: A conversion is when someone buys your product or services after clicking through one of your ads. The goal of PPC campaigns are conversions as they are what bring in money for your business. They are a great tool and can help you get more leads, but only if you know how many people have actively converted into a lead or sale.
Cost Per Conversion: The last metric to look at is CPC, which is the amount of money you have spent per conversion. This will give you an idea of how much it is costing to reach a customer, which can be important for businesses who are on a budget.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your website more visible in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. By optimizing it, you are increasing the amount of people who will be able to see your business online and click on your ads when they appear in search results. There are many different ways to optimize a website including changing the title tags, meta descriptions, and the content on your pages. The only way to see which types of changes are working for you is to track how much traffic different posts and pages are getting online.
Organic Traffic: Organic traffic is the amount of people who have landed on your site naturally through a search engine. A search engine displays a unified list of results, and will provide ad pages related to the query. Organic traffic is significantly influenced by a website being featured on the first page of the results listing. Organic search traffic is among the most targeted visitors your site will get. When a person searches for something specific, it’s likely they'll find you.
Keyword Ranking: Search engine results pages are populated with keywords. A single word or phrase that produces a page is considered a keyword if it appears frequently in your content and you rank well for it on search engines like Google. Having a high keyword ranking is important because the higher you rank, the more likely it is that a customer will find your business and click on your ad. The keyword rankings are updated every day so you can always see how well your site is doing at any given time.
Backlinks: Backlinks are links to your website from another website. The more sites that link to you, the higher you will appear in search results, which means people will be more likely to visit your site and click on your ad. Semrush states that "2.2 times more backlinks lead to URLs on the first position than to the URLs on the second". Therefore, backlinks are crucial to achieving a high SEO.
SERP Visibility: The SERP or the search engine results page is where your website will be displayed if a person searches for something online. The more pages you have linking to your site, the higher it will appear in search results, which is why SEO is so significant to businesses in general.
Digital Marketing Analytics Tools
In order to stay afloat in the digital age, businesses need to make proper use of analytics tools. These are used by companies and individuals alike so that they can measure their success on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, analyze web traffic data, and more.
Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free tool that allows website owners to track data about their site and their traffic. The biggest benefit of Google Analytics is the ability to see information in real time, meaning you can watch how your business runs and how people react online.
AdWords Performance Grader: Used by Google, the AdWords Performance Grader is an online tool that allows you to grade your current advertisements and see how well they are doing. The performance grader analyzes each ad’s click-through rate, impressions, and position as well as quality score information when users click on the ad.
Heap Analytics: This mobile and web analytics tool provides in-depth analytics to help you understand how your customers interact with your business. With Heap Analytics, you can track activities, events, conversions, and more on any device.
Mixpanel: This is a user-friendly tool that allows you to see simple and detailed data about your business online. Mixpanel is excellent for seeing how users interact with your website and which parts of it they are spending the most time on.
Cyfe: This tool provides you with a variety of different statistics about your business. Cyfe offers live social media monitoring services as well as access to diagnostic tools that will provide statistical information regarding your industry and competitors.
Semrush: Semrush is an effective marketing tool that helps you optimize your online presence. The free version of the app allows you to easily see who has been sharing links to your site or other sites in order to gain more traffic.
Hotjar: Hotjar is an analytics tool that allows you to collect visual data about your site’s visitors. This means that you will be able to see how people are using your website, including how far they scroll through each page and where exactly they click on the screen when viewing a page.
Optimizely: This tool analyzes user data, including click-through rate, in an effort to optimize your website for a higher level of success. It is important that business owners optimize all of their sites to give viewers as much information as possible while also making the site easy to navigate.
Key Takeaways
The key to digital marketing is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the metrics and tools that are available in order to be able to properly use them in your business. To do so, it is crucial that you understand exactly what each metric means and how it can help shape your strategy. This will allow you to focus on building stronger content, advertising more efficiently, and finding better strategies that will ultimately make your digital marketing efforts a success. Digital marketing dashboards are meant for businesses who want to generate profit through Internet marketing, and one of the best ways to do so is by using the right digital marketing metrics.
Optimax Business Consulting can help evaluate your company's digital marketing analytics strategy to make sure you are scaling the correct digital marketing campaigns, focusing on the right metrics, and better utilizing digital marketing analytics platforms for your digital marketing strategy. Reach out today for a free consult.
Join the conversation: What types of digital marketing channels are you running? What metrics do you find most useful to track? We'd love to hear your thoughts!
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