Originally published 2/18/20 - Updated 12/15/22
A healthy return on investment is the most common goal of every digital marketing campaign, no matter what industry your business falls into. While every campaign's goal is to increase revenue, not every campaign will work out that way. Some campaigns are better suited for raising awareness while others are better at driving traffic to your site.
Ultimately, when looking at the big picture, each of the different types of campaigns should help to bring in money. This brings up an important question: how do you track which digital campaigns are successful and which aren’t?
1. Set a Goal
You must set the specific goals you're aiming towards, no matter the campaign. Maybe you're simply trying to get more traffic to your website, or perhaps you'd like visitors to fill out forms. It's possible that you're trying to sell a certain item or product.
What matters is knowing what you're going for and identifying that goal. You can track metrics all you want, but if you don't have a set goal, what exactly are you really tracking?
2. Know Your Numbers
Okay, on the surface this seems obvious, but it's not always as easy as it seems. To be successful in a digital marketing campaign, you must fully understand these three elements:
Conversion Rate
The rate at which a conversion happened. In other words, the number of people who did the thing you wanted them to do, such as filling out a form, making a purchase, or signing up for your newsletter.
Engagement Rate
The rate at which people engage with the advertisement. This can mean clicks, visits, or time they spend hovering with their cursor.
Traffic Patterns
You need to know where your traffic is coming from. You can check Google Analytics to see where the traffic on your site is being initiated.
3. Achieve Maximum ROI
Okay, again, on paper, we realize this seems obvious. However, if it were that simple, everyone would be doing it. The fact is, investments in digital advertising yield a lot of revenue when spent correctly. According to Statista.com, "For each dollar invested in digital search advertising, U.S. advertisers gained about 11 U.S. dollars, making it the medium with the highest return on advertising spending (or ROAS)."
Bear in mind, however, success is hardly an instantaneous thing that will just happen overnight. Just like advertising, it takes time to build on your campaigns and achieve success.
4. Measure Returning vs. New Visitors
It's important to know who's coming back for seconds, as opposed to how many people are visiting your site for the very first time. Measuring these metrics is a good way to determine if your digital strategies are working or not. If customers stop by but don't make a purchase and never come back, you might have something off in your digital optics. On the other hand, if you're seeing repeat visitors, you're doing something right; the next step is to figure out how to make them convert from visitors into leads, and from leads to customers.
5. Measure Online Sales
This is a great (and simple) way to see your analytics and realize your successes. After installing a tracking code on your website, you can easily see which campaigns are leading consumers to their shopping carts. Particularly for e-commerce businesses, this is one of the most important metrics you can measure overall. Once you know which campaigns are driving your sales, you can eliminate those that aren't doing well while focusing on the messages that resonate best with your audience.
Being able to track the success and performance of your digital marketing campaigns is something that every business should be on top of. This way, you won’t be guessing which campaigns will work or not; you'll be armed with the tools to help you decide whether you're wasting your time with ineffective digital marketing campaigns. If you're feeling stuck with your strategies, let our team at fuze32 guide the way!