Digital Marketing analytics..don't stress the small stuff...!

let's just try and remove the 'digital' fog...!

I'm putting this post together as I've recently had the pleasure of getting to know a few folks who have either entered the 'digital focussed' workforce from a more traditional marketing background or are returning to work after a leave of absence. One thing that both groups share is a seemingly genuine 'fear' of digital marketing and the associated disciplines.

This isn't an advanced post on the finesse of digital marketing and neither is it meant to be. I do hope though that this post (and others to follow) helps anybody that feels a little adrift in meetings, feels that 'they should know this (digital stuff)' but doesn't feel as sure-footed as they would like to be.

It’s easy to assume everyone nowadays has at least a passable enough knowledge to not get swept away by the flood of digital marketing theories, platforms and analytics. 

Specifically, in the world of analytics, it can seem that there are so many things to track, how do you know which ones are really integral to making sure your business stays afloat, or better yet, sets sail? 

As a starter can I suggest the following, really focus your attention on the buyer’s journey, how do your visitors go from not knowing your company to your company becoming part of their consideration set to becoming a customer or even an evangelist, ultimately delivering revenue to your organisation.

The important part is that your analytics should always be tied back to your return on investment, (R.O.I.).

I'm in no doubt you'll have a real range of metrics that tie back to your business goals,
but let me drop in a health warning here! Companies can very often get caught up in 'vanity metrics', these are things like; registered users, downloads, and pageviews. These are so very easily manipulated, and don't necessarily correlate to the numbers that really matter; active users, engagement, the cost of getting new customers (c.p.a), and ultimately revenues and profits.  See this from TechCrunch and off those company's go, merrily paddling down-stream, trying to chase every number in the book and coming back with nothing that they can build on.

What is a 'vanity metric'?

A 'vanity metric' refers to a number that looks 'really great (but truly it's poor) on paper', but in the bigger picture really doesn't play a significant role. These kind of metrics are really, downright deceiving, (in my opinion). But hey, a million Facebook likes, who wouldn't want that? Well unless they're engaged, active on your platforms, becoming customers themselves or are talking about you in such a way that through their 'evangelism' influence others to become your customers it's just a big number.

So can you see the problem when a company sets its focus on these metrics when they aren’t actionable? Large numbers can feel like great accomplishments, but if only a small portion of those numbers actually matter to you and your company, should you really be spending so much time and effort on them? PLease just ensure you're numbers = action.

There is an argument that the greater the traffic, the greater the opportunity. I'm sorry this just doesn't cut it. This is like cold-calling, drag-net fishing, 'spraying & praying', throwing good money after bad, wishing on a prayer, crossing your fingers and finally... yes, you should always be looking at getting your numbers up, so here are five digital marketing analytics that tie back to the end goal and provide actionable insight into your business efforts.

1. Traffic

I WANT US TO BE REALLY CLEAR ON TRAFFIC..! Traffic numbers without context could and to my mind should be considered a vanity metric, but broken down, it can be extremely valuable to your marketing strategy.

Segmenting your traffic by its source is a pretty good place to start. Track these top five channels.

Organic: Those who have typed in a query and come to your site because it showed up on a search engine results page (SERP)
Direct: Those who typed in the URL to get directly to your site
Referral: Those who came from another website via a link
Social: Those who were directed from social media to your site
Paid: Those that have clicked on a paid ad or promoted piece of content

Most of the time, companies are focused on bringing in organic traffic, this covers two very key areas for a good website. 

1. One if your content is well written, adds value, and engages customers you will not only be delivering a great customer experience and we hope because of this they chose your service
2. That well written, engaging content will be rewarded by having its position in the search results improved hence the need for search engine optimization (SEO). 

So what to do with the traffic you're generating? I tend to lean towards wanting to focus on traffic that looks like it might be acquisition, however, this is only ever part of the story, by separating out your traffic by the source it can help you identify other opportunities for your company, like whether you should focus more on brand awareness or increasing social engagement.

Most content management systems (CMS's) allow you to break down your traffic by source. Google Analytics also provides this capability, however, it can be a bit more difficult to decipher if you don’t spend much time on the platform but it's worth bearing with it.

I can't express how much more satisfying it is if you just dive that little bit deeper into your numbers to see how visitors (your potential, or actual customers) are interacting with your site. To try and get a real digital understanding of your customers I recommend you pay close attention to:

• How much time they spend on your site
• How many pages they view during their visit (and which pages they’re spending the most time on)
• Whether they are a new or returning user
• Whether they are using desktop or mobile

The goal is to be able to identify things like:

• Which of your content pieces drive the most traffic
• Why does the content you've identified resonate with your customers
• What actions are visitors taking on your site
• Where are a majority of your visitors dropping off

You may or may not have begun to realise that everything we do in digital is about asking questions, questions, questions. If you aren't fundamentaly inquisitive....

This will help you focus your efforts on the areas of your marketing strategy that matter. Once you understand more about your visitors, how they’re getting to the site, what they’re interacting with and where they’re dropping off, you can develop a plan of action to keep them engaged and lead them to conversion points.

2. Conversions

Conversions are the good stuff, the actions you want people to be taking on your site. You'll hear of “macro” conversions, like downloading an eBook or filling out a contact form, but “micro” conversions, like subscribing to your blog, are equally important. It gets a visitor into your system as a contact. From there, the goal is to get them to be a customer or (even) an evangelist, but how?

We’re all familiar with the four main steps to gaining new customers in inbound marketing:

• Attract.
• Convert.
• Close.
• Delight. 

But let’s break this down a little further. How do you establish a relationship with your potential customers from the outset?

• Create content that is helpful and engages your visitors
• Establish trust and expertise
• Help them identify their problem or need (they may not even know they have one yet)
• Provide a solution

By tracking conversions, you'll start to quickly recognise the actions visitors typically take before becoming customers. Maybe your average customer reads three blogs, downloads a piece of content and receives five emails before agreeing to talk to a salesperson. This knowledge can help you optimise the user’s journey to conversion.

Once you understand your customer, you can identify common themes and develop content with helpful suggestions, responses or answers. As with any marketing tactic, the most important part is measuring the success of these efforts. Some pieces of content, emails or ads may work better than others. This is where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) comes into play. You know what they say — never stop improving.

Take the insights you gain from tracking conversions to improve your overall marketing performance.

An example I'm happy to share from part of my own strategy is; as well as creating ads on Facebook (paid) and hoping they stick, identify posts that already have high engagement and boost those. This way, you already know the content is relevant and more likely to reach an audience of like-minded individuals.

HEALTH WARNING: The Social Platform algorithms are as apt to change as the search engine algorithms so it's really important you stay abreast of these. I'll be publishing further gumf on this sort of stuff so keep popping back if this might be helpful to you.

3. Engagement

When thinking about the influence of social media, many often think of reach; or the number of people who could potentially see your social media post or ad. It’s a great number to reference when you plan to promote something since it can help to justify why you’re using social media in the first place (if at your company you're having to justify the use of social platforms, we need to talk) but it is another one of those numbers that (without context) could be considered a vanity metric. Since it is just a potential number, it doesn’t take into account those who don’t see your ad, those who totally tune it out and those who are actually interested in what you have to offer.

Think of it this way: If your company had the opportunity to create a commercial for the Wimbledon Championship, your reach would be incredibly high. But some of your most valuable customers may have missed your commercial because they were in the other room, some weren’t able to catch the matches and others just may not be interested in your business. (Top takeaway: this is why targeting is so important.)

A better measure of social media analytics is engagement. Engagement refers to the number of likes, shares or comments a post receives. Visitors who are engaging with your brand are much more likely to be customers or evangelists (since they’re taking the time to connect with you) and often this also leads to more qualified audiences. Keep a close eye on your traffic and engagement from social media. If you can see you’re getting a number of contacts and qualified leads from social platforms, it might be time to focus on up-weighting your social presence to drive more engagement.

4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

For internet users who aren’t sure they have a problem yet, or don’t know your solution (what you sell) exists, another way to drive brand awareness is to invest with paid campaigns that target people using certain criteria. The click-through rate of the brand ad's you publish is an important indication of relevance. Your audience wants to feel like you understand them.

A small health warning on bidding on brand terms. It's a good way to drive engagement but the quality of the lead can vary wildly, what you want to avoid is your PPC ads generating calls or leads that are for information you could have provided to customers deploying other tactics.

It’s important to pay attention to the performance of your ads as a low CTR can mean a few things:

• Your target audience isn’t specific enough
• The landing page does not match the expectations given in the ad
• Your offer isn’t strong enough 

To identify the issue, try A/B testing. Switch up the offer, update your landing page or try a more targeted audience.

5. Site Load Speed

This is a killer, not only for a users experience but also for how your website is considered by the algorithm. As internet users ourselves we know how frustrating it is to have to sit and wait...we're no longer built to have that kind of patience. How many of us have given up on a site that took too long to load?  Well according to Kissmetrics, 40 percent of people abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. That my friends is a whole load lot of traffic to lose.

A great tool to check your site load time is Google Page Speed Insights. While this is a helpful tool to see how you might be able to improve your site, as Google says, “A high score is correlated with a fast user experience but does not guarantee it.” The tool focuses on two areas—above-the-fold and the full page—and uses only those aspects of a page unrelated to a network connection. However, this doesn’t take into consideration items like animation that may delay load on purpose.

Don't sweat it if your site doesn't score 100/100, this is fine (for now)  The goal is to improve your site load speed so that users don’t get frustrated and leave, not necessarily to impress Google (however as with all things to do with algorithms, these can change fast, and you and your team need to be on your toes and keeping yourselves up to date).. Pay attention to these key areas for optimal speed:

Image sizes: There is no point putting images on your site that aren't clean and crisp, we're very much in a visual age now and a picture can convey in an instant the message you want your customers to remember. Having said this it doesn't mean they have to be thousands of pixels in size. Compress your images and size them according to how large they will need to be displayed on the site.

Content Distribution Networks (CDNs): CDNs are used to house your website content closer to your end user, therefore reducing the amount of time it takes for a server to load a request (this delay is known as latency). Be sure you’re using a CDN to help decrease the distance your website information has to travel to your website visitors. 

It's worth re-iterating, know which digital marketing analytics are important to you and your bottom line, it'll help you stay focused on things that matter. Before getting started on any marketing initiative, define your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like traffic, engagement and conversion rate and how they tie back to your business goals.

Then, create yourself an action plan to ensure you're optimising the performance of your content and campaigns...Happy Days..!