Even a glance at Google Analytics can be overwhelming if you’re not a marketing professional. The sheer volume of data available can leave your head spinning and requires quite the talent to sift through it all. So, that begs the question: do you really need to know all of it?
The whole point of interpreting and analyzing metrics is to better understand and track ROI (Return on Investment) on your marketing efforts. But, you don’t have to be an Analytics wiz to understand the effect of your digital marketing efforts. You just need to know a few basics. Here are five metrics that you absolutely can learn to and should pay attention to that will help you measure ROI:
- Cost Per Lead: If your website is set up to collect leads for your sales team to “close,” then you must know just how much you’re actually paying for each of those leads. You, therefore, need to pay attention to those cost-per-lead metrics. If, for example, the cost of each lead turns out to be more than what you produce by closing leads, then this measurement is indicative of a backward return on investment, which is obviously not the direction you want to be taking.
- Lead Close Rate & Cost per Acquisition: In direct relation to your cost-per-lead metrics, you must also understand the measurements of your close rate as well as your cost per acquisition. You want to be able to check your lead close rate against the leads being generated. This is how you’re ultimately going to ensure that your digital marketing efforts are fully delivering leads profitably. These numbers will also help you to develop new digital marketing efforts, as they will stand as your control markers. So, in the event that you experience a sudden influx in new leads but find that they close at a lower rate, then you’ll know to adjust your targeting efforts. This data will also help you figure out your cost per acquisition by simply dividing your marketing costs by the number of sales generated. And, just like that you’ll know what it costs to get each sale for a firmer grasp on your ROI.
- Channel Conversion Rates: To meet optimum outreach and ROI, you need to know exactly where traffic is coming from to know where most of your customers are and where your marketing efforts are seeing the most success. To really get a firm grasp on this, you need to understand conversion rates, by channel (e.g. organic, paid, social media, etc.) as well as by device, as these are better indicators of success and will show you where the best opportunities lie. For example, if 75 percent of your traffic comes from organic marketing and 25 percent comes from PPC, but you find that your PPC conversion rates are double that of organic, then you know that you should invest more in PPC. From there, if you’re able to increase PPC traffic to match that of organic, then you can double your ROI. The same applies for device usage.
- Landing Page Performance: Landing Pages are huge when it comes to converting leads. And, there are a lot of things that should be measured when it comes to their performance, including bounce rates, CTR (click-through-rate), conversions rates, conversion assists, etc. So, when interpreting this data, you’re going to want to look for pages that just aren’t helping drive conversions. These landing pages will need to be fixed or eliminated altogether, or you’ll need to make changes to the marketing efforts driving traffic to these sites.
- Brand-Non-Brand Factors: It’s important to know that brand searches tend to have higher click-through and conversion rates than non-brand searches. This is because brand searches hit on a customer base that’s already familiar with you. So, pay attention to how each is performing and separate this data. When you do so, you’ll receive additional insight into what is or isn’t working through your marketing efforts.
One last thing to remember when comparing data is to pay attention to year-over-year comparisons, not month-to-month, which doesn’t take into account seasonality or monthly abnormalities. You’ll get the truest sense of how your campaigns are faring when you look at the bigger picture. Understanding ROI is all about wrapping your head around these basic metrics. And, once you do, the story of your marketing efforts will be fully revealed so that you can make adjustments to achieve even greater success.
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