It's the end of the month, and the end of the quarter and for B2B marketers everywhere it means one thing... analyzing the heck out of your online marketing activity from the past 3 months, measuring its lead generation success and proving the ROI value to the rest of the business.
But with a sea of stats, analytics, dashboards and reports to wade through, across all the different digital platforms...where do you even start? And what digital metrics are REALLY worth measuring?
It's time to get rid of the digital headache and learn from the very best. Here's the top digital marketing metrics the experts measure, and why you should too...
1 - Macro (overall) and Micro (campaign level) conversions %
Avinash Kaushik - "Focus on measuring your macro (overall) conversions, but for optimal awesomeness, identify and measure your micro conversions as well."
The Learning: Don't forget your strategic goals when you're planning your campaign activity. You need to constantly question whether the smaller KPI's and metrics (micro conversions) are going to achieve the wider business goals (macro conversions) you've set.
TIP: Looking to set yourself SMART KPI's? Take a look at Avinash's guide at what makes super awesome and super lame metrics (handy!).
2 - Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Will Critchlow - "Cost per acquisition (CPA) is a critical metric for paid marketing channels where the costs scale linearly (or super-linearly) with conversions...If your CPA is too high you can reduce bids, increase conversion rates or increase customer spend."
The Learning: With paid advertising activity, in particular, you have two 'levers' you can pull: your message and your bids. Keeping a close eye on cost metrics further through the funnel will make sure you don't end up with lots of top-of-funnel vanity traffic, but negative ROI at the bottom (Uh-oh).
3 - % Conversion Rates At Every Stage of the Funnel
Rand Fishkin "Conversion funnel metrics (knowing the percent of potential customers make it through each step of a given conversion process, and which channels or behaviours predict that they'll make it further)"
The Learning: If you want to generate the best return possible, you're going to have to understand how your conversion at each stage of the sales funnel affects your ROI. Forecast conversion performance BEFORE you invest another penny in online marketing activity and you won't be caught out further along the line.
4 - Increase in % Channel ROI
Ed Reece - "When you're talking to executives or CFOs, it's my personal opinion that executives always want to see the money first. So focus on financials, conversion rates, number of sales, number of leads. They don't want to go through the marketing first and then get to the numbers. Just give them what they want."
The Learning: 47% of B2B Marketers say their biggest challenge is 'demonstrating importance' of their activity to the wider business. Your digital marketing metrics need to translate into meaningful business outcomes for senior management, and that means proving it's ROI. If your digital campaigns are successful lead generators, then shout about it!
When it comes to your digital marketing metrics, you're swimming in a sea of data. But if you wrestle that (sometimes overwhelming) insight into accurate analysis throughout the whole sales funnel, AND translate your successes into meaningful business outcomes, you'll be well set for anything the next 3 months can throw at you.
Ready to take your digital marketing metrics to the next level?
Forecast your digital marketing performance and avoid any nasty surprises in your online campaigns - Download the Digital Marketing ROI Forecaster here