8 Digital Marketing Metrics You Should Keep an Eye On

In an increasingly competitive digital marketing world, the success of each and every campaign hinges on the details. For the diligent, every bit of data might reveal an oversight or room for improvement for timely interventions. Yet, such endeavors as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are hard to measure and fine-tune accurately. With this in mind, we’ve gathered 8 among the most substantive digital marketing metrics you should keep an eye on.

Traffic metrics

First, across all campaigns and practices, measuring traffic is always crucial. A spike may attest to your methods’ effectiveness, and a sudden dip may warrant swift attention.

#1 Traffic; volume, sources, and destinations

Of course, the first metric to keep an eye on is all traffic. Total website visits make up one of the most fundamental metrics to track in Google Analytics.

However, total traffic volume is only so actionable in itself. To make the most of it, you may first analyze traffic types:

• Organic: the type that comes from search engines; this may attest to your SEO’s effectiveness.
• Direct: the type of traffic customers with navigational intent produce; this will help you gauge audience retention.
• Referral: the type of inbound traffic typically produced by backlinks; this will inform your link-building efforts.

Alt-tag: An overview of traffic volume and sources in Google Analytics.

Then, you may delve deeper into specific page destinations. Whether organic, direct, or referral, identifying which pages and content entice the most traffic may inform your strategies. Conversely, pinpointing the worst performers may reveal which parts of your website may warrant improvements.

#2 Leads; acquisition rates, sources, and cost

Similarly, you may wish to dig deeper into your analytics to examine your lead generation and acquisition efforts. Digital marketing metrics you should keep an eye on in this category include:

• Lead generation rates. The first step toward customer acquisitions, you may first examine your website and pages to deduce your lead generation rates.
• Lead acquisition rates and sources. During the past generation, most campaigns will require actual acquisitions. Compare your impressions and lead generation with your acquired leads, and identify which pages perform best in this regard.
• Cost per lead acquisition: Finally, you may measure campaign cost-effectiveness through its acquisition costs. Divide your lead generation costs by the number of acquired leads to deduce this metric.

Link building metrics

Link building is an essential component of SEO campaigns. If you are engaging in this essential practice, you will need to pay attention to metrics for measuring link building success.

#3 Backlinks; quality and balance

Initially, not all backlinks are made equal. This SEO truism bears mentioning because backlink quality truly matters for search engines.

Backlinks come in two main, distinct types; Follow and NoFollow. A Follow link looks like this:

<a href=”https://example.com”>example anchor text</a>

Conversely, a NoFollow link looks like this:

<a href=”https://example.com” rel=”nofollow”>example anchor text</a>

In the case of Follow backlinks, the Domain Authority (DA) of sites that link to you will bolster your own. They act as effective endorsements for search engines, boosting your authoritativeness and SEO score. Thus, you may gauge your backlinks’ quality through the linking sites’ DA and adjust your efforts accordingly.

For NoFollow backlinks, the rel= “nofollow” tag tells search engine crawlers not to follow said links. DA transfers don’t occur in this case, but NoFollow backlinks are still valuable nonetheless. Not only do they also produce traffic, but they significantly your backlink profile appear natural – as Eology illustrates:

Alt-tag: An illustration comparing natural and unnatural backlink profiles.

Doing so is essential if you want to avoid potential penalties by search engines, which can seriously harm your performance and SEO score.

#4 Referral traffic and engagement

Similarly, referral traffic is among the most crucial digital marketing metrics you should keep an eye on. In this context, you may gauge how much traffic each backlink and referring domain produces for you.

Arguably more important, however, is engagement. Backlinks typically allure engaged audiences, but you may best quantify engagement rates for both backlinks and general traffic. Consult Google Analytics, heat maps, and other analytics tools of your choosing to gauge engagement through:

• Bounce rates
• Time on page
• On-page behavior
• Pages per session
• Repeat visits

Performance metrics

With traffic and backlinks in order, you may delve deeper into specific performance metrics. These will, of course, largely depend on your exact campaigns in question, so here we may explore two universal categories.

#5 Conversion rates

First, all lead generation and acquisition will invariably seek to convert leads into customers. For this reason, you may divide the number of total conversions by the number of sessions to deduce conversion rates.

Conversion rates may then be split into multiple subgroups for more precise, actionable insights. Among others, consider the following:

• Conversion rates of specific Call to Action (CTA) buttons
• Conversions across different channels and devices
• Conversion rates of new versus existing customers

This will then allow you to gauge your cost per conversion, so you may focus on optimizing specific elements. To do so, you will typically need to engage in Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) practices.

#6 Net Promoter Score

As regards customer perceptions too, your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is among those digital marketing metrics you should keep an eye on. The typical way to do so is to conduct surveys asking your customers, on a 0-10 scale, “how likely is it that you would recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?”

Alt-tag: An illustration of the Net Promoter Score scale.

As ReviewPro’s illustration highlights, you may then divide respondents into:

• Detractors (0-6): unhappy customers who may actively work against your brand’s reputation.
• Passives (7-8): satisfied customers who you may still lose to competition.
• Promoters (9-10): very satisfied customers who are typically loyal brand advocates.

Finally, you will need to subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters to get your NPS score. Doing so will give you a reliable overview of your brand’s standing and how customers perceive you, informing branding efforts.

Revenue metrics

Finally, there are a few digital marketing metrics you should keep an eye on as consistently as plain revenue metrics. All others will help inform your course, but ones on revenue will ultimately dictate profitability and long-term success.

#7 Customer Acquisition Cost

First, customer acquisition can end up being very costly. The reason why NPS and other loyalty metrics are so crucial is because retention costs considerably less than acquisition. LinkedIn’s Shaumik Saha quantifies this difference as a staggering 7x:

Alt-tag: An infographic on the benefits of customer retention by LinkedIn.

Still, customer acquisition is an indispensable part of all marketing. You may thus first gauge your campaigns’ effectiveness by deducing your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). To do so, simply divide your total marketing costs by the number of acquired customers during the same period.

#8 Return on Investment

Finally, you may measure your campaigns’ final Return on Investment (ROI) to gauge their benefits on revenue. To calculate simple ROI, you may subtract the marketing costs from your sales growth during that same period and then divide by the marketing cost:

(Sales Growth – Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = ROI

However, you may need to be more specific to attribute revenue to individual campaigns directly. That is, you may account for your existing organic growth before your campaigns and then subtract that from sales growth in the calculation:

(Sales Growth – Average Organic Sales Growth – Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = ROI

ROI is, of course, rather hard to calculate, especially for such practices as SEO. Still, you must do so; no metric offers as much value as ROI.

In closing

To summarize, there is a wealth of digital marketing metrics you should keep an eye on, ranging from initial traffic to final ROI. Some will depend on individual campaigns and their goals, and many will rely on your analytics tools of choice. Still, the 8 outlined above should warrant your attention more than most, as they will reliably gauge your campaigns’ effectiveness.