One of the greatest challenges facing brands ? from scrappy startups to market giants ?is how to gauge real, financially applicable business goals from digital marketing efforts.
Is it possible to put a financial value on social media? What is the ROI of blogging? Here is a few simple self-help steps below will help steer you in the right direction for valuable insights from your online marketing efforts.
(Editor?s note: Though this focus is on digital marketing, it?s worth noting that the same technique can be applied to traditional marketing channels as well. ? MF)
What do you hope to achieve?
Unlike traditional marketing efforts, there is an over-abundance of data available from your digital marketing efforts. Don?t confuse what can be measured with what should be measured.
You could track website visitors (in both unique and repeat flavor) to then drill down further to traffic source and then further to discover if the best traffic came from an iPad or Windows computers using Firefox, Explorer or Chrome ?oh, and they?ll have an 1280 x 1024 display resolution.
The insight of ?what size monitor do my customers use? can be cool ?and it?s nice to know that you can get all of that information when you need it ?and this is where analysis paralysis usually starts.
Focus on what you should measure. Start at the real end business goal, then work your way back. It?s OK to think abstract here. It could be as simple as ?increase downloads of my free trial? or as high-level as ?increase engagement.? In the following steps, we?ll discuss how to start quantifying
What do you mean?
What do you mean by your goal? What do you mean by ?increase engagement?? This simple step will unlock more ?a-ha!? moments than any other exercise or workshop. Challenge yourself, your peers and coworkers to define the goal in plain English.
Fight the urge to Google your answer. Force yourself and your peers to answer this unplugged. There is no ?standard? method of measuring your goal and Googling will only get you stuck on the least useful lowest common denominator.
While ?website engagement? is a pretty tricky thing to nail down, defining it in plain English may show you exactly what hard numbers you?ll need to look at to gauge success.
In talking with a B2B peer about engagement on her brand?s tech-sector website, we decided that an ?engaged? user is a visitor that:
- Views more pages on the website
- Spends more time on the website
- Visits repeatedly and with frequency
- Maybe downloads a specification sheet from the website
- Maybe fills out a ?contact us? form
- Maybe opts-in to regular updates via email
It?s worth noting that I?ve seen longer and shorter lists, but this list worked for this particular case. Time on site, pageviews per visit and frequency and/or repeat visitors will almost always make the list, but are your visitors really engaged if they aren?t compelled to act?
Can you match the attributes to the data?
Each of the attributes from the definition above can be tracked using Google Analytics or most other enterprise-level web analytics platforms. If you can?t figure out how to match an attribute from your own definition, consider refining it further or consult a web analytics and digital strategy specialist.
From the above sample, we built a model that looks something like this:
It looks scary, but it can easily be spread out into a simple Excel sheet. Creating the formula first allows you to consider the important factors and allows you to use the same model beyond analytics, such as creating targeted marketing based on an individual user?s engagement score.
Pages (Pi) should indicate the average pages per visit across all visitors throughout the timeframe measured (typically one month.) This metric is displayed on the main audience overview report of Google Analytics.
Time (Ti) is the average time visitors spend on site as measured across all visitors within the timeframe. In the formula, it is used as minutes (seconds/60.) This metric is displayed on the main audience overview report of Google Analytics as minutes and seconds, so the marketer using this model will have to remember to convert.
Repeat (Ri) visitors is the percentage of traffic within the timeframe who are repeat website users. This metric is displayed on the main audience overview report of Google Analytics.
Frequency (Fi) is an index of the average frequency of visits within the time period. Google Analytics tracks this data over the course of the year, allowing for values from 0 days since last visit to ?365+.?
For this model, the marketer had decided that a very engaged user would view 5 pages or more. To use this in our metric, the value (F
= (5 ? (Average Days since Last Visit)) * -1).
The metric ?days since last visit? appears in the Audience reports of Google Analytics under Behavior, then Frequency & Recency.
Note: When taking this data from Google Analytics, I prefer to use an advanced segment, or filter, that shows me only the repeat visitors, as new visitors are counted as ?zero days since last visit,? which would artificially reward a site with low repeat visitors.
The final part of this summation is the overall conversion rate of site traffic towards one of the goals specified. You could simplify this to be (Ci) and just do a raw count of the conversions, but for the sake of this model, we decided to use the conversion rate as a multiplier to emphasize the importance of conversions to user engagement.
Can I actually use this thing?
Split your model into an Excel sheet or table for an easy work sheet. If you?re handy with formulas, you can save yourself the calculator step and build something really smart [read: nerdtasticly awesome] but a simple worksheet and handy calculator work just as well.
| (Pages/Visit + | Time on Site + | Repeat % + | Freq. Avg.) * | Conv. Rate | Total |
| 5.64 | 3.58 | 29.34 | -2.1 | 1.45 | 52.87 |
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Our relative value for the month reviewed was 52.87. Is that good or bad? Depends.
There is no try?
Is your first grade good or bad? It?s neither. It?s a baseline. The value you earn from your own metric is a relative value suitable only for your own website and business goals. It can?t be used to compare yourself to competitors, but it?s brilliant for comparing you to yourself.
Armed with this metric, you can accurately grade the effect of your website optimization and digital marketing efforts for their effect on whatever you were tracking. Have a model for as many high-level goals as you can create.
Regularly using this method empowers you as a data-based-marketer to walk into you annual review with a hard stat of success, ?This year we increased website engagement 334%.? Or, a clear opportunity for focusing your efforts, ?Our website maintained the same level of engagement for the past two years. This year, we?ll look at strategies and solutions to increase website engagement.? Powerful stuff, wouldn?t you say? Marketing annual reviews have a bad reputation for being ?fluffy,? but this allows you to back formerly ?soft? claims with the hard facts.
Building Data into Marketing
For the sake of example, we?ve used a fairly general sample case of ?website engagement,? but we were sure to include ?and even favor ? hard business stats into our grade. The same method can be used to track numerous high-level goals such as:
- Website Engagement
- Social Media Effectiveness
- Content Offer Engagement
- Paid Search ROI for B2B Content Downloads
- Mobile Device User Relative Usability
- And many, many more?
Some key attributes may require a little extra setup or even specialized tools to track and use. The insight of knowing what can be measured certainly helps in creating innovative and complete models for gauging success. If you?re stuck, consider discussing your business goals with a digital marketing agency like SilverTech (shameless plug) to start your journey in the right direction.
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Are you so addicted to data, you once started Weight Watchers for the joy of having meal metrics? You might just love it here. Check out our team and our career and internship opportunities.
Tags: digital marketing, Google Analytics, Marc Frechette
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