Marketing Metrics: Unlocking Data Behind Your Campaigns

“Vibes” are big these days, and there’s a lot to be said for vibes.

– “Why did you leave the party early?” 
– “The vibes were off.” 
A perfectly acceptable answer. 

– “I really like him; he gives good vibes.” 
Sounds great! 

– “I think our marketing strategy is working.” 
– “Why’s that?” 
– “Vibes, baby.” 
This is less good.

Rather than a vibes-based approach, establishing and tracking marketing metrics is much more likely to lead to success.

The Importance of Marketing Metrics

If you don’t track actual metrics, you can’t know if your marketing strategy is working. Ultimately, sales, revenue and profit are the most important metrics for most for-profit enterprises. But it’s prudent to go more granular than that. Marketing metrics can tell you exactly what you should change and when.

How Do Marketing Metrics Help Businesses?

The right metrics enable enterprises to adjust their marketing strategies accordingly. By establishing relevant key performance indicators (KPIs), a company can track its progress throughout a marketing campaign. 

For example, say you’re tracking impressions. If you’re halfway through the campaign and already surpassing your total target impressions, congratulations — your marketing efforts are outperforming expectations. If, on the other hand, you’re falling short, you know how to target your improvements. 

Examples of Important Marketing Metrics

There are dozens of metrics you could track. However, the truth is, not all metrics are equal. “Vanity metrics” can look impressive, but they rarely correlate with actual revenue.

Some key marketing metrics include:

Conversion Rate

A conversion is the act of converting a lead into something more. This can be different for each organization. There are macro conversions, such as an online shopper adding a product to their cart. There are also micro conversions, such as downloading a white paper. Conversion metrics are key because they track how effective an organization is throughout the marketing funnel. 

To calculate the conversion rate, divide the total number of conversions by the total number of sessions, and then multiply it by 100. 

Email Opt-In Conversion Rate

Subscribing to an email newsletter is another example of a micro conversion. This is the percentage of visitors to a website who sign up for that organization’s email list. An opt-in signals an interest in that organization’s products or services on behalf of the customer. A high conversion rate suggests two things: 

• The company has a product or service that interests people. 
• The website is well-designed and compels people to sign up for their email marketing content.

Customer Acquisition Cost

This metric speaks to marketing effectiveness. This is how much it costs a business to acquire a single customer. The cost here covers sales, marketing and anything else required to convert a lead into a customer. 

To calculate customer acquisition cost, add up all costs involved in acquiring new customers in a specific period, then divide that total by the number of new customers who made purchases during that period. It’s important to include only first-time buyers, as including repeat or return customers will skew the data.

Cost Per Lead

A lead is somebody who’s likely to become a customer. As marketing metrics, cost per lead complements cost per customer. 

To calculate cost per lead, add up the total marketing spend in a given period and divide that by the number of new leads.

Customer Lifetime Value

Marketing metrics can tell you how many customers you have and how much it cost you to acquire them. But what do you get out of the average customer?

To calculate customer lifetime value, multiply how much the average customer spends on a purchase by the average purchase frequency. Then multiply that number by the average lifespan of the customer relationship.

For example, say your average customer spends $100 three times per year and they typically remain a customer for 3 years. The equation would look like this: 100 x 3 x 3 = $900.

Traffic Source

The traffic source can influence other metrics, such as the bounce rate. This is where visitors are coming from. Google Analytics is a great tool for figuring out how people get to your website, such as through organic search, paid search, email, social media, referrals from other sites or by directly typing your website’s URL into the search bar.

If a lot of your website traffic comes from organic searches as people go to your blogs, this tells you that your SEO content marketing strategy is working and that you’re addressing in-demand topics. It might also shed light on your bounce rate.

Traffic source can help you modify your marketing strategy. If one channel is doing great while another is struggling, you know where you can improve. For example, if your email marketing is a major source for visits, yet hardly anybody comes from social media, then you probably need to up your social media game.

Abandonment Rate

What’s being abandoned here is a (virtual) shopping cart. This is one of the key marketing metrics for e-commerce businesses. If an oddly high number of people put products in their cart but then fail to complete the transaction, something is wrong. 

Sometimes the issue is pricing — the purchases make sense to the potential buyer when they’re selecting items, but upon seeing the total, they get scared away. Taxes or fees could be the issue here. A discount or coupon for a future purchase could reduce abandonment rate and boost sales. Or maybe the user experience just isn’t intuitive and there’s something about the process that’s frustrating customers.

Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement is an improvement on the old digital marketing metric of follower count. The number of followers a brand has on social media can often be a vanity metric. If it’s a high number, this suggests a marketing success. 

But how many of those followers actively engage with your brand on social media? How often do they like or comment? Do they even see your content, or for that matter, are they even real people? It’s difficult to know, but by tracking engagement metrics — likes, comments and shares — you get a much more authentic picture of your social media marketing performance.

Click-Through Rate

Your click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click through to your site from links within emails, social media posts, search results or ads compared to the total number of people who saw those links/ads. CTR is a useful marketing KPI to track because it shows how effective an ad or post is, rather than just how visible it is.

Search Position and Visibility

Your search position is where you are on a SERP. This is a very important metric for measuring SEO marketing performance. Did you know that the first result often receives more than 30% of the clicks? Lower-ranked results can have a CTR of 5% or less! And if you’re not on Page 1, your traffic from organic search is probably minute.

The higher your search position, the higher your visibility. That’s what makes search position one of the most crucial marketing analytics to track.

True ROI

True ROI comes from marketing activity that affects revenue directly. The best marketers know that not all common marketing metrics are equal. Vanity metrics aren’t useless; they can hold valuable information in some contexts. But tracking which marketing metrics lead to sales demos, newsletter sign-ups and, of course, purchases is how a marketing team truly understands what’s working and what isn’t.

How Do You Track Marketing Metrics?

Here are some great tools for tracking different marketing metrics:

• Ahrefs: Ahrefs is a great SEO analytics tool. Ahrefs offers free and premium tools. You can do site audits, keyword research, backlink analysis and more.
• Google Analytics: Google Analytics collects data from your websites and apps to provide insights into your business. It’s a free tool and is great for SEO and marketing purposes. You can access it through the Google Marketing Platform using your Google account. 
• HubSpot: HubSpot has free and premium plans available. It’s an all-in-one marketing, sales and support platform.
• Semrush: Semrush is great for analyzing keywords and tracking search analytics.

More Information = Better Informed Decisions

Armed with the right marketing metrics, you can make the right decisions for your organization. Just remember, the best metrics to track can change over time. So equip yourself with the analytics you need now, make any necessary changes and don’t be afraid to chart a new course when the time feels right.