If there’s one thing we don’t have a shortage of in the Internet age, it’s data. We can (and do) capture the most minute details about interactions with our digital content. Although this information has the potential of providing tremendous insight, it can be overwhelming.
This is especially true if you are responsible for digital marketing at a small to medium sized business. There are lots of things you could measure, but which metrics are critical for you to monitor to evaluate the success of your online campaign? Here are five you should definitely be tracking.
1. Cost per acquisition
Most small and medium businesses are challenged with limited staff, budgets and time, so it is especially important to understand marketing investments have the intended impact.
Cost per acquisition (CPA) measures the cost-per-lead conversion. Everything has a CPA, because everything has a cost – even if it’s not a direct cost. CPA may not be in your web analytics tool, but it’s easy to quickly calculate by channel, campaign or some other categorization in a spreadsheet. For example:
| Campaign | Campaign A | Campaign B |
| Impressions | 5,000 | 2,500 |
| Clicks | 1000 | 1000 |
| Click Through Rate (CTR) | Impressions/Clicks = 20% | Impressions/Clicks = 40% |
| Total Cost | $7,000.00 | $5,000.00 |
| Cost Per Click (CPC) | Cost/Clicks = $7.00 | Cost/Clicks = $5.00 |
| Conversions | 750 | 750 |
| Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) | Cost/Conversions = $9.65 | Cost/Conversions = $6.67 |
If something has a poor CPA you should not continue to invest in it.
2. Conversion Rate
You can calculate the most basic version of conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors or impressions. However, it is possible to calculate much more specialized rates of conversion rates such as high value customers (customers with purchases over X amount) or repeat customers.
Conversions can also occur over multiple channels. Whether you choose calculate detailed conversion rates or stick with high level understand, it’s critical that you understand if your digital marketing efforts are actually delivering customers.
3. Click-Through Rate
CPA is a bottom line metric that details how much your spending for each conversion. Click-through rate is a related, but slightly different and more detailed measure. Click-through rate helps you understand if you are drawing the attention and interest of potential leads. Like conversion rate, click through rate can be measured at a macro level like channel or campaign or down to a specific link or piece of content.
4. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percent of visits to your site where the visitor left after one page. A high bounce rate may indicate your landing page is not relevant or is uninteresting. It can also indicate that you are targeting the wrong audience. Monitoring bounce rate regularly can help you quickly identify campaigns that need to be improved or ended.
5. Loyalty
Getting new customers and visitors is important, but so is retention. It costs more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing customer. Loyalty measures how well a campaign attracts repeat visitors. Almost every analytics tool can track this metric even if your site doesn’t require registration.
There are thousands of other metrics you could track, but if you are just getting started these five metrics will go a long way to providing quantitative proof of your digital campaigns performance.
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Thanks Marietta. I agree, I learn so much during my daily surfs!