Just as with anything, in order to be successful you need a strategy. To succeed in growing your business, you need to specify your target audience, set goals and timelines, determine the channels you should use to best reach your audience, and follow inbound marketing best practices.
Website analytics are the key to making informed decisions. Data, analytics, and insights can be integrated into your business decision-making and feed your website planning process. But exactly how do you measure a campaign’s success once it’s launched?
1.Total Reach
Any marketing campaign, inbound or outbound, will have little success if it doesn’t reach anyone within your intended audience. You can promote your website via social media, ads, and email, but if you’re not reaching your target demographic, they cannot engage with your brand and become customers over time. If you’re running a social ad, your campaign’s reach can be found under the Insights tab of your business page. There are also other ways to measure reach. We cover them in detail later in the post.
2. Click-Through Rates and Website Visits
The first indication you’ll get on whether someone who saw your content found it relevant, is whether they clicked on the link. Most email marketing platforms and social media channels provide analytic dashboards that relay the click-through rate (CTR) associated with a campaign. Google Analytics, for example, shows your site’s sessions, referral traffic, visitor geographic information, traffic by time of day, and devices used to view (to name just a few).
3. Bounce Rates
One key component of any successful marketing effort is consistency: regularly push out content, but always deliver content your intended audience will find relevant. Otherwise, initially interested audience members become disenchanted and leave. That’s what makes your website’s bounce rate a valuable metric to track. If a certain channel or effort results in a higher bounce rate than its counterpart, chances are users are expecting something different than they’re receiving. Analyzing your bounce rate will aid you in making necessary adjustments.
4. Lead Conversion Rate
Lead generation is a core principle of any inbound marketing effort, which is why your lead conversion rate (the percentage of your website visitors that turn into leads) should be a core metric for tracking campaign success. It’s important to understand that not everyone who visits your site will become a lead. However, your website should leave an impression that separates you from your competitors by offering value through content and resources. If your conversion rate falls below the average for your industry, you may need to take a look at what you’re not offering that others in your industry are.
5. Content Engagement
Whether you create the next viral video or answer questions pertaining to your niche, if your audience loves your content, they’ll begin to interact with and share it. This type of interaction is especially valuable for two reasons: one, it increases your content’s exposure beyond your initial audience (at no extra cost. Who doesn’t love that?). And two, content with question keyword optimization can make a huge difference to your SEO strategy. You can generate a lot of organic traffic, earn links or convert traffic into sales simply by grabbing a share of the featured snippet.
Keeping track of these five metrics will help you gain an accurate understanding of your inbound marketing efforts. Not sure how to start using the dashboards we discussed in this post? Our free website audit identifies problems that are not allowing your site and campaigns to deliver.