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Three Steps to a Better Marketing ROI

With the growth of digital and social media, it seems that there are more and more data available for your marketing communications every day and almost as many tools to analyze them. This information overload can be overwhelming, but don’t throw your hands up and say, "There are too many numbers! I don’t know which ones matter, so I'm not going to measure at all." That’s the worst thing you could do for your business. It's just as bad as trying to measure everything.

Data overload

 

Invest smarter, not more

There are plenty of best practices ebooks and resources out there to help you determine which metrics you need to monitor to improve your return on marketing investment. But before diving into any 20-plus page documents, here are three metrics that can help you invest your marketing dollars wisely.

 

1. Engagement rate on social networks

 

What to look for

Reach and impressions can tell you how many newsfeeds your post appeared on, but they can't tell you who’s actually interested in your product or what you have to say. This is why you should be focused on engagement – likes, shares, +1’s, retweets, comments, clicks, etc.

 

Where to look

LinkedIn: Click on the analytics link at the top of your company page and view the updates table, or the engagement graph.

 

Google+: Click on the view insights button located on your my business page and switch view to engagement.

 

Facebook: Click on the insights link at the top of your business page. View posts or click reach and scroll down to the likes, comments and shares graph.

 

Twitter: Log in to your account and type analytics.twitter.com in the URL bar. View the engagement column.

 

What to do

Take note of which posts are getting the best engagement rate. Find out what your high-performing posts on each network have in common, likely they will differ from network to network. Were they short? Did they have a question or statistic? Were pictures used? Take what you learn and apply it to your future posts so you can attract and engage more people that are interested in your business.

 

2. Google AdWords performance measurement

 

What to look for

Creating a list of keywords and throwing them up on Google AdWords is fairly simple, but it’s just as easy to spend more of your marketing budget than you need to. AdWords, like all marketing tactics, isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. There are many options available to help you tailor your strategy. Take advantage of them. Looking at the time spent on your website from clicks on specific keywords is a good place to start.

 

Where to look

Connect your Google AdWords account to your Google Analytics account. In Analytics, click acquisition from the sidebar options. Select AdWords then AdWords keywords from the drop down menu. Look at pages/session and average session duration.

 

What to do

Identify which keywords have the lowest pages per session and average session duration. These keywords aren't attracting quality traffic and are wasting your marketing budget. To correct this, you have two options: remove the keywords from your AdWords or make adjustments. The second option involves a bit of investigation. You will need to discover why your keywords are ineffective. Are they too general? Do they have other uses or meaning for those outside of your industry? These issues can be resolved by being more specific in your keyword selection and by adding negative keywords.

 

 

3. Goal conversion rate on Google Analytics

 

What to look for

Google Analytics has an entire buffet of options that lets you segment and analyze your website visitors. One of the most useful tools they offer, however, is Goals. This feature allows you to attribute specific actions, such as online orders, lead forms and quote request completion, to specific traffic sources. You can even attach a monetary value to each goal.

 

Where to look

Select admin from the top menu. Under the view column click goals. Then click the red + new goal button.

 

What to do

After you have established some goals for your website, take a look at how each of your channels (organic, paid, direct, referral and social) are contributing to your goals. To do this, select acquisition from the reporting page sidebar and click channels from the drop down options. Paying special attention to the conversion columns in this view will help you identify which channels have a positive ROI.

The success of your marketing investments hinges on your ability to select meaningful metrics and connect them directly to your company’s leads and sales. Knowing which marketing tactics are converting not only lets you know where to reallocate your funds but it gives you clues about your customers so you can tailor your communications to make their experience personal. Having this information also enables you to predict what your pipeline will look like in coming months.

What metrics are you currently using to measure the success of your campaigns? Tell us below.

If you would like to learn more about our approach to analytics and ROI, visit our website or contact us today.

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