THE BEST 6 DIGITAL MARKETING METRICS YOUR BOSS CARES ABOUT

Discover the best digital marketing metrics your boss only cares about. Boost your leads and sales by measuring the right metrics.

The best list of the most important digital marketing metrics you should be tracking.

Brought to you by Mau, a Senior Digital Marketer at eDigital.

WHAT IS A DIGITAL MARKETING METRIC?

A digital marketing metric is measurable values used by marketing teams to demonstrate the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns to a company’s overall business objectives.

BUSINESS METRICS VS DIGITAL MARKETING METRICS

The reality is that many companies are not quite there yet, using digital marketing metrics at odds with their overall business goals.

Some recent surveys demonstrate that marketers lean on metrics and data that are easily available, rather than those aligned with business strategy.

In Australia, over half (52 per cent) said they used these metrics because “they are included in the Digital Marketing technologies we use”, or because “they are standard metrics for measuring Digital Marketing”.

Marketers then should align business goals with their digital marketing objectives and track progress accordingly.

As the customer journey becomes increasingly digital and social, it’s vital for businesses to measure metrics along the customer journey – either by using different measurement tools and platforms or by collaborating with teams across the business.

customer journey stages funnel diagram chart framework

DO NOT GET DISTRACTED BY VANITY METRICS

With so much digital marketing and social media marketing information available, it can get quite easy to get distracted with fluffy metrics that do not really add up to the bottom line of your business.

WHO CAN USE YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING METRICS

Marketers can use Digital and Social to extract customer insights, ensure their data is shared across teams and departments, and make it actionable in multiple areas of the business including:

Sales team
“C’ level
Product Development/ Innovation teams
Purchase departments
Customer Service

BEFORE DECIDING ON YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING METRICS

Below is a checklist for you before you define your key Digital Marketing Metrics:

Start by identifying what the top 3-4 most important objectives/goals are for your business. Are they aligned to the customer purchase journey ( category awareness > brand awareness > comparison > preference > trail, purchase > customer support > loyalty > advocacy)? if not why not? Generally, they should.
Connect Digital/social media marketing activities to your specific business outcomes. For example, the number of new customers in a specific period may be a business metric, then you can tie the number of new customers obtained from Social Media to your business metric.
Define your exact Digital Marketing and Social Media data needs that will only help you measure your specific Marketing goals.
Do not get distracted by other data your digital/social platforms/tools/vendors are offering you.

In saying that, we would like to introduce you to some of the most popular metrics your CEO will likely care about.

The rest is a distraction!

THE TOP 6 DIGITAL MARKETING METRICS YOU SHOULD TRACK

MACRO METRICS

A Macro metric provides a view across the entire marketing function. These are the top metrics your boss will be interested in.

1. ALTV – AVERAGE LIFETIME VALUE

ALTV formula = Average purchase value multiplied by the average purchase frequency rate.

Why: There is no other metric more important in marketing than this one. Over time, this metric will tell you whether you are getting customers to spend more on your brands. It is likely to be the most important metric because it will ask your marketing activities to drive customers to buy either: a) buy more often, b) buy more quantities or c) buy more premium versions (more expensive ones).

Tip: The formula for purchase frequency is: the number of orders (365 days) divided by the number of unique customers (365 days)

2. ACPL – AVERAGE COST PER LEAD

CPL formula = Digital Marketing Costs / Total Leads.

Why: My second favourite. All digital marketers should be accountable for it. This is what digital marketing should do for your business, create interest in your services or products.

Tip: Calculate this per Digital Marketing Channel: SEO, SEM (Adwords), social media, affiliates, email marketing, display advertising, etc.

3. CPA – AVERAGE COST PER ACQUISITION

CPA formula = Total Digital Marketing Channel Costs / Total New Sales from that Channel

Why: If you are in B2B your sales team play a big role in converting the leads marketing brings. Sales might say: “Marketing does not bring good leads” but you – the marketer – might say: Sales team are crap at converting our leads”. It is important to ensure your sales team are happy with the support marketing is generating.

If you are in B2C, your level of acquisition might not only depend on your marketing but also on:

Purchase facility: is it easy, user user-friendly to buy from you, do you offer fast delivery and easy returns?
Product quality: is the quality of your product good enough for people to buy?
Price: is your price too cheap or too expensive that people are running away?
Top of mind: are you re-marketing or reminding people to buy from you? you need to be top of mind when they are ready to buy.

The above factors might be affecting your cost per acquisition per channel.

Tip: As per CPL, you should calculate this per Digital Marketing Channel: SEO, SEM (Adwords), social media, affiliates, email marketing, display advertising, etc.

Note: CPA can also be called: Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC)

4. ROAS – RETURN ON AD SPEND

ROAS formula = Revenue from Advertising Source / Cost of Advertising Source.

Why: It is important to have clear what channels return the most of your Digital Advertising dollars. So you can re-calibrate your budget split per channel

Tip: Digital Media Attribution is key, otherwise you end up shifting your budget to high recurring channels and a few bucks on the top of the purchase funnel: category need, awareness, and comparison.

5. ROI – RETURN ON INVESTMENT

ROI formula = Total profit generated from Digital Marketing / Total Digital Marketing investment.

Why: Is it worth having a Digital Marketing Department in your business? ROI will tell you.

Tip: You will need strong Digital Marketing Tracking in all areas to ensure you are accounting for all revenue, expenses and costs.

6. CR – CONVERSION RATE

CR formula = Total Visits to your website / Total website sales.

You should also calculate the conversion rate for your top “lead-generation” landing pages. The formula will be:

CR = Total leads from that specific landing page/ Total Visits to your landing page

Why: Because increasing this metric means your website usability, navigation, content or product information is improving.

Tip: Conversion Rate might also spot seasonalities in your business or days and times people tend to convert the most. You can adjust your digital marketing dollars accordingly.

OTHER METRICS FOR “CONTROL-FREAK” BOSSES

MICRO METRICS

If you or your boss is a control freak and really want to dig into your Digital Marketing Performance, she/he might be happy to see how you are progressing with the below metrics…

ACPV – AVERAGE COST PER VIEW

ACPV formula = Total Advertising Spend to a Specific Landing Page / Number of Unique Page Views.

Why: This metric will tell you how much it costs your business to get unique eyeballs on your key landing pages. So you can review and compare different alternatives to generate traffic to that landing page.

Tip: I like to measure ACPV by specific page and by specific channel so you have a clear idea of how much is costing you to drive traffic to a specific page and compare it with the cost of driving traffic to other landing pages.

RVR – RETURNING VISITORS RATE

RVR formula = Total Return Visitors / Total Visits

Why: I love this metric. It says how interesting your website is for people to come back and hopefully buy from you again. Remember return visits can also mean people are still trying to figure out or stuck at solving something. (especially if you do not offer email or call centre support).

Tip: Your loyalty program, email marketing (e-newsletter subscribers) and unique offers to previous visitors are a great way to bring return visits back to your website.

CTR – CLICK-THROUGH RATE

CTR formula = Total Clicks / Total Impressions.

Why: I like this metric to be tracked and presented by my web designers and Google Ads specialists who are responsible for all the Display Banner Ad creatives and Text Ads.

Tip: Is your creative team A/B testing different options? If not they should!

CPC

CPC formula = Dollar amount $ paid per click

Why: Google Ads’ CPCs are already too high to even make a decent trial. If this is not your case, you might want to compare your CPC values across different channels including Adwords, SEO (I will explain how to calculate CPC on SEO), Social Media Ads and Display Banner Ads (paid on CPC instead of CPM).

Tip: You might want to cap max CPC for ads that have low CPL or CPA, this way you can bid higher on the ones that are actually bringing you either lead or tangible sales $$.

METRICS ONLY GOOD FOR SPECIFIC BUSINESSES

APV – AVERAGE PAGE VIEWS PER VISIT

APV formula = Total Page Views / Total Visits

Why: This is a great metric only if you want people to stay the longest consuming content on your website or app: online newspaper, online magazine, online radio station, online TV channel, dating app, etc.

Tip: Improvements in website usability and “call to actions” that drive users to read related or other popular content are key to driving this metric up. Too much advertising on your website or app might not help with this metric.

ATS – AVERAGE TIME ON SITE

ATS formula = Total Time Spent / (Visits – Single Page Visits)

Why: Same as APV this is a great metric only if you want people to stay the longest consuming content on your website or app: online newspaper, online magazine, online radio station, online TV channel, dating app, etc.

Tip: Same as APV, improvements on website usability and “call to actions” to drive people to read related or other popular content are key to driving this metric up. Too much advertising on your website or app might not help with this metric.

BR – BOUNCE RATE

BR formula = One Page Visitors / Total Visits

Why: Same as APV or ATS you want to reduce bounce rates only if you want people to stay the longest consuming different content pieces on your website or app: online newspaper, online magazine, online radio station, online TV channel, dating app, etc.

Tip: If 30% or more of your traffic is coming from Google Ads, you might want to check your landing pages are relevant to the searches you are bidding for. Same as APV, improvements on website usability and “call you actions” to drive people to read related or other popular content are key to driving this metric up. Too much advertising on your website or app might not help with this metric.

METRICS ACROSS THE PATH TO PURCHASE

There are some other metrics your CEO might want you to measure and keep track and they represent customers getting closer to purchase or loyalty:

Email sign-ups
Content downloads (guides, pdf’s, white-papers, reports, infographics, etc)
Mobile app downloads.

With limited time, resources and human talent, you might not be able to focus on all metrics and/or be able to measure them all as some metrics are more difficult to measure than others.

OTHER KEY METRICS TO REVIEW

Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing can surely help with other key aspects of your business that you might need to define key metrics for, including:

Customer Churn
Customer Satisfaction (turning customers into brand advocates by improving customer service) Some popular metrics here are “First response time”, “Deflection rate”
Brand Recall
Mitigating risk (protecting your brand from threats or bad commentary)

I will talk about these key objectives in a different article soon and will link it from here.

FINAL TIPS

CONDUCT A LOW-RISK PILOT TEST. Use a pilot test to demonstrate how Digital Marketing and Social Media can help your company achieve a particular business objective. Propose a low-risk, time-limited program to experiment with a new initiative and track how that campaign performs. The pilot program creates a business case for further investment—such as increasing digital ad spending or investing in a social media platform—or it can provide lessons to improve current Digital Marketing efforts.
START WITH A FEW METRICS. Digital Marketing and Social data can provide insights that drive business value, but they can’t do the impossible for your business. Be clear from the outset about what you can—and can not—do when it comes to measuring the ROI of Digital Marketing. Demonstrate what is possible with the data you have, or data you can easily access, to prove the value of Digital Marketing in areas that impact the bottom line.
ACTION! You set metrics to be able to make informed decisions. Use past performance to improve future campaigns and actions and do not forget to find interesting trends and/or insights from your data collection (for example, you may notice that Instagram Stories Ads with more than two photos result in 3x conversions). Gather more data to determine if your analysis is correct, and come up with tactics that are easy for other teams to replicate.

Conclusion

Some of the above best digital marketing metrics are important in assessing the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns and strategies.

These top digital marketing metrics provide valuable insights and data-driven information that guide decision-making and help marketers optimise their online marketing strategies and executions and whether their digital marketing campaigns are meeting their digital marketing goals and objectives.

eDigital can help you conceptualise, plan, develop, run and optimise successful digital marketing campaigns that generate leads and sales for your brand.

Our digital marketing services include:

Strategic planning for social media and other digital marketing channels.
Online advertising management and optimisation: Google Ads Search, Display, Re-marketing and social media advertising.
Marketing training: social media training and digital marketing training.
SEO strategy and execution. Including content development:articles, stories, eye-catching and SEO-optimised visuals.
Celebrity and influencer marketing campaign strategy.
Brand development. Logo creation, brand personality development and design of marketing materials.
Consumer contests/competitions/giveaways.
Email marketing. Dip sequence design and deployment.
Conversion rate optimisation. It is also called “path to purchase” optimisation.

Next: How to write the best Digital Marketing Plan

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Final note: Want to reduce customer acquisition costs and dependency on paid media? eDigital‘s marketing strategy training will unmercifully review your marketing, help you build a marketing engine with channels and assets you own, stir your team’s thinking, bring new ideas for new conversion paths and boost customer lifetime value.