The Most Important Marketing Metrics to Track

There are some metrics that are more important than others when measuring your marketing activity. If you make strategic decisions based on the wrong metrics, you may hinder or stop the growth of your business.

This does not mean that you should not measure “vanity metrics”. These are still important indicators to measure marketing performance. There is a difference between indicators and metrics related to content, channels, and landing pages.

In this guide, we’ll explore various key metrics and ways to measure each stage of the marketing funnel. This section will cover key marketing metrics, explain what they are, how to use them, and why they are important.

Your “True North” marketing metrics

The most important metrics for measuring your marketing performance are those that align with your north star metric. The following metrics are important in determining whether your growth initiatives are helping you achieve your business goals.

Most of these might seem obvious to you. These things are worth mentioning as it can be easy to get distracted. You should experiment with new channels and different forms of content.

1. Revenue

Revenue is important for measuring how effective marketing is.

Why? At the end of the day, a marketing campaign could be successful if it generates a lot of traffic to your website or a high number of likes on an Instagram post. If a business is not making money, then something is not right.

You can get an objective view of your marketing performance by measuring it by revenue. You can investing in a particular channel if it is helping with the cash flow and overall growth.

2. Customer lifetime value (CLTV)

Knowing how much your customers are worth over their lifetime is extremely helpful. By understanding your average CLTV, you can get a more accurate measurement of the ROI for your marketing efforts.

Typically, CLTV is calculated based on how much a customer spends with you on average each time they buy, how often they buy, and how long they’re a customer. Here’s a step-by-step process to calculate this:

First, calculate your average purchase value by dividing the total amount of revenue over a year by the number of purchases over that same period
Then, calculate average purchase frequency rate by dividing the number of purchases above by the number of individual customers who purchased
Next, calculate customer value by multiplying the average purchase value (see step 1) by the average purchase frequency rate (see step 2)
Now, calculate your average customer lifespan, which is simply the average number of years a customer does business with you
Finally, calculate CLTV by multiplying customer value (see step 3) by average customer lifespan (see step 4).

3. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

It is much easier to track your marketing expenses now, because there has been a move from traditional advertising to digital channels. You can make better strategic decisions for your marketing by calculating how much it costs to acquire a customer.

To calculate CAC, divide the amount spent on a marketing channel or campaign by the number of customers acquired. If you spent £10,000 on Facebook Ads and generated 2,000 customers as a result, your CAC would be £5. This means that, on average, it cost you £5 to acquire each new customer.

CAC can often seem like a large number, especially if margins are thin. This is why it is important to calculate and improve your customer lifetime value. We will talk about this more when we discuss ROI.

4. Cost per lead (CPL)

CAC is not the only important metric to calculate, cost per lead is also important. This is similar to CAC, in that it is determined by the amount of money spent on marketing divided by the number of leads generated.

This, along with CAC, is useful for several reasons. First, it will help you determine if the leads you are generating are coming in at a sustainable rate. Additionally, it will permit you to concentrate on streamlining various stages of the sales process to diminish your cost-per-lead while simultaneously boosting conversions.

Let’s use Facebook Ads again as an example. If you spend £10,000 on ads and generate 5,000 leads, every lead would cost you £2.

If you wanted to reduce your cost per lead, you could try a couple of things:

Reduce the cost-per-click (CPC) of your Facebook ads by making your copy and creative more relevant
Improve elements on your landing pages to increase conversion rates

To improve marketing performance, you need to understand and use critical metrics.

5. Marketing return on investment (MROI)

Finally, there’s your marketing return on investment. This can be calculated one of two ways:

Dividing the amount spent on marketing (overall and across specific channels) by revenue generated
Dividing the amount spent on marketing by CLTV

The first step gives you a true, objective view of your marketing. This text is discussing how effective a marketing campaign has been in terms of how much money it has generated. However, it’s still a good idea to use the CLTV to help calculate future revenue and justify your marketing investment.

Metrics for Awareness

It is critical to measure your results at the awareness stage in order to understand the reach of your marketing message. It is a good way to see how well known a brand is and how much interest there is in it.

This section will provide an overview of the key metrics and marketing areas you should assess at this stage.

1. Website traffic

How many hits or page visits do you get to your website on a weekly or monthly basis? Looking at your website’s visitors from a high-level perspective will give you insights on seasonality, trends, and your best-performing channels or content.

There are several web analytics tools on the market that can be used to acquire this data. Google Analytics is a widely used, free and easy-to-use option. There’s also Statcounter, GoSquared, Matomo, and many more. You should look into your different options, research them thoroughly, and pick the one that is most aligned with your business goals.

The distribution of your social media content can give you insights into how effective your branding is. Organic reach is getting your content in front of your audience without having to pay for it. Paid reach is when you use paid advertising to get your content in front of your audience.

Organic content is content that is not paid for and is engaging and enhances your brand. With organic, it’s important to show customers your personality. The best way to engage with your audience is to be transparent and professional, respond to comments, follow hashtags, and be relatable. This is your opportunity to connect with customers in a way that builds trust and loyalty.

Although paid advertising can be costly, it can also be a great way to target a larger audience than you would be able to organically. Use these tools to increase awareness about your site, generate leads, drive traffic to your site, and offer promotions with improved visibility.

The reach of your social media platforms is an indicator of how widely your content is being distributed.

3. Conversion rate

A social media conversion is when a follower does something that you asked them to do. This may be to visit your website or sign up for your newsletter. A conversion rate is a number that indicates how successful you are at convincing your followers to take action. Tracking conversions is important because your organic social media content is at the top of your marketing funnel. This content attracts new audiences and familiarizes them with your brand.Ideally, the content is so good that audiences move down the funnel and visit your website, subscribe to your email newsletter, and become paying customers. To calculate conversion rate, divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors, then multiply by 100. For example, if there were 100 conversions in a month from 1000 visitors, the conversion rate would be 10%. Twitter would have delivered a 4% conversion rate. If 10,000 people visited your website from Twitter and 400 of them made a purchase, Twitter would have a conversion rate of 4%. The conversion rate for that month is 4%. (400 / 10,000) x 100 = 4% If you want to see a boost in conversions, consider the following:

Add a link-in bio directed to a page on your website where you want followers to convert
Create an Instagram Shop that links back to your website
Use link-out opportunities like Stickers or Swipe Up (for those of you with 10,000+ followers)
Always end your posts with a strong call to action like Bloomscape’s directive below, prompting readers to click the link in their bio

Website metrics

If you have put in the effort to create a good website, it is worth taking a little extra time to track your website’s performance using Google Analytics. In addition, the tool is free and easy to set up. Google Analytics uses a “page tag,” a piece of JavaScript code, to get data from visitors to your site. The app collects and stores data on a dashboard, which generates customizable reports. This allows you to track and visualize the results.

1. Traffic sources

It’s important to know where your website’s users are coming from in order to understand how they’re using it. That’s a traffic source. meaning: The channels that people use to access your website are called traffic sources. For example, if you know that most of your website traffic comes from Facebook, then Facebook would be considered a traffic source. It would be beneficial to invest money in paid social advertising on Facebook to drive more users to your site. You can see where your visitors come from in Google Analytics by expanding the Channels section. To find this information, go to Google Analytics and click on Acquisition, then All Traffic. Finally, select Channels. After selecting your primary dimension, you can further analyze your data by breaking it down by social media platform, email campaign, or any other important secondary dimension. Some of the most common channels to look for include:

Paid social advertising, including Facebook ads and promotions
Social channels, including organic content on your social media platforms
SEM/Paid search, including Google Ads
Email, meaning any time someone clicks on a link to your website in an email
Direct traffic, meaning anyone who finds your website by typing into the search bar

2. Average Pageviews per Session

How many pages a person views on your website in a single session is what Average Pageviews per Session measures. A business’s website typically tries to engage its visitors and convince them to do something, like signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, or becoming a member. The more pages a visitor views during a session, the more likely they are to take the desired action. In order to track pageviews for your website using Google Analytics, go to Google Analytics > Acquisition > Overview.

3. Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit a website and then leave without taking any further action. It is better to have a lower bounce rate because it means that visitors to your site want to spend more time on it, learning about your brand and products and possibly even making a purchase. One way to lower bounce rate is to place important information on the homepage. Your homepage should act as a guide for visitors, directing them to your e-commerce pages, FAQ, contact form, or SEO blog. This will give them the most sought-after information they are looking for.

Metrics to measure ROI

The return on investment for your marketing strategy is what determines how effective it is. The primary purpose of tracking ROI is to confirm that your marketing investment is yielding a positive return. Making a plan for budget allocations for future campaigns lets you budget more effectively.

1. Return on Ad Spend

To calculate your ROAS, divide your total revenue by your total ad spend. ROAS can help you determine if your digital advertising efforts are successful. Here’s a simple equation to help you calculate ROAS: (Revenue Generated by Ad / Cost of Ad) = Return on Ad Spend Imagine your business invests $500 on a digital advertising campaign. The ad will keep track of how many people click on it, visit your website, and make a purchase. If you make $3,000 as a result of this ad, then you have made $6 for every dollar that you spent.

2. Cost Per Lead

CPL is a metric that lets you see how effective your marketing campaigns are in terms of generating new leads. It is useful to quantify CPL by assigning a monetary value to leads in order to establish how much money needs to be spent to generate new customers. Total Marketing Spend / Total New Leads = Cost Per Lead (CPL) This means that it costs you $10 to engage each lead. How much you should spend per lead (CPL) depends on your industry, so you need to decide if $10 is a affordable option for your business.

Wrapping up

The marketing metrics in this guide can help you assess your marketing efforts and performance as a whole. You should always keep your goals in mind and not let anything distract you from them. The following text indicates how well your marketing campaigns are contributing to your strategic business goals.