Online Marketing: What Should You Measure?
There are plenty of articles out there that tell you why you need to implement content marketing into your strategy. By now, you have had every single online marketing tactic beaten into your brain. Some of these articles may have even told you that you need to measure your metrics so that you know just how successful your online marketing efforts have been. But what these articles are failing to tell you is exactly what you should be measuring.
Instead of staring at your analytics and scratching your head, the following information will tell you exactly what you should be monitoring.
Audience Engagement
You want your audience to come to your website and spend some time perusing what you have to offer and possibly making an inquiry or sale. In order to know how your audience is being engaged on your site, you’ll want to track the average amount of time that users spend on your site; how often your content is being shared; the average number of pages a visitor views before leaving; and your bounce rate (the number of people who don’t go past your first page).
When you know all of this, you can determine how long your website has to capture your audience’s attention. If you notice that the average person is only spending 1 minute on your site, then you have to gain their attention in 1 minute. This will also show you which pages are receiving the most traffic. This could tell you where you have the best chance of getting your visitor to convert. If you notice that your About Us page is receiving a significant amount of traffic, you may want to put a call to action on that page, such as sign up for your email, register for your blog or even inquire about a product or service.
Website Conversions
You’ll also want to make sure that you’re tracking your conversions. A conversion refers to someone who transfers from a simple visitor to taking some type of action, such as signing up for your newsletter. You will need to decide what your conversion is based on your goals. For example, if the goal of your website is to get more people to sign up for your newsletter, then your conversions would be those people who sign up. If your goal is to increase sales, then a conversion would be someone who makes an online purchase.
Knowing your conversions will help you determine if you are reaching your goal and if your tactics are working. If your goal is to increase online sales, but you haven’t generated one, then you know that your online marketing needs some adjusting in order to give you the results you want.
Website Traffic
You will also want to track where your traffic is coming from. Are you receiving traffic from search engine searches? If so, what keywords are the most successful? Are you receiving traffic from a backlink on another website? If so, which one? When you know where your traffic is coming from, you know where you can reach your audience. If your traffic is coming from the search engines, then you know that you should put an extra focus on your search engine marketing.
There are plenty of tools out there that can help you measure your online marketing success. Google Analytics and Topsy are great resources to help you measure these items most effectively.
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