Talk is cheap but marketing is not, especially for brands that invest a lot of resources into their marketing campaigns. The reasons for embarking on a marketing campaign determines the kind of result to expect, which are also based on the kind of marketing tactics and activities deployed. These tactics and activities need to be properly tracked to determine the effectiveness of the marketing campaign.

Effective marketing should be able to yield great returns on investments, but this starts with first acquiring accurate data about the target audience of the brand. There are many tools out there to help with extracting this very vital information which would be used to create an effective marketing campaign. From the moment of a/b testing the campaign to releasing it, every single aspect of the marketing plan or strategy must be tracked to get accurate returns on marketing investments. These metrics can be effectively tracked with the help of a specialist SEO agency or with the help of the following. And these are the 8 top metrics to monitor for effective marketing.

Sales revenue

This is the bottom line of every marketing campaign. There is no point investing in marketing tools when no money is generated to cover all the marketing expense. All channels used to market the brand or business must be tracked to know which channel is bringing in the most sales revenue. This is a critical metric that needs to be monitored to understand how effective the marketing campaign is. Once the best sales generating channels have been identified, funds for marketing can be diverted to the channels to increase sales revenue (or more funds be allocated to such channels).

Conversion rate and leads generated

While it is important to make immediate sales through any marketing campaign, it is also not bad to get a few leads and/or conversions that can lead to future sales. Conversions as simple as signing up for a newsletter, downloading website app and so on. The landing page of a website can also improve conversion rates on the site. Activities on the landing page of the website should be adequately tracked to know if the content and positioning of content on the landing page is generating an impressive conversion rate and /or leads.

Customers life-time value

How often do customers buy on the website? How much do they spend when they buy? Do they buy repeatedly or are they one-off buyers? These are also critical metrics to track because it directly impacts the sales revenue in the long run. One-time customers who do not make purchases can be monitored (especially their behavior on the website) to know how to bring them back to the site and possibly make another purchase until they become regular customers.

Tracking this website metric will help brands predict how much revenue each customer will bring over a period of time (based on the timeline and total marketing cost of the campaign). The lifetime value of customers can be increased by keeping existing ones happy. Offering discounts, treasure hunts (where they get to win a prize), and asking for feedback can help improve the happiness level of customers in order to encourage them to make more purchases.

Bounce rate

Ever wondered how often visitors leave the website without checking other pages on the site? If this happens very often, something is wrong somewhere. With web metrics tracking tools, reasons for such high bounce rates can be discovered and improved on. The more website owners are able to get a larger percentage of the website traffic to stay longer on the website and interact with it, the chances of getting sales, leads or conversions would be higher.

New visitors vs returning visitors

One clear indicator that new, or returning visitors, are enjoying content on the friendly layout of the website is when they click on several pages on the website. Having five unique visitors, for instance, on the website with fifty page views says a lot about the quality of content on the website. Also, it is essential to go beyond counting the number of visitors and page views to tracking the sources referring the traffic, knowing what each visitor is doing the website, as well as tracking the percentage of the traffic gotten that is converted to leads or customers.

Search engine performance

How often do search engines refer traffic to the website? This puts a test on the quality of content. People are constantly searching for something and sites need to be well optimized for it to rank high on search engines. If the traffic referral from search engines is low, especially while running targeted ads on search engines like Google, this is a clear indicator that something is off with the content on the website. Asides content, inbound links (others linking your website, which they have found relevant to their own target audience, to content on their website) also helps with ranking higher on search engines.

Social media backlinks

If social media marketing was deployed as a strategy for the marketing campaign, then it needs to be properly tracked. Traffic needs to be tracked to know which social media platform is generating the most sales, leads or conversions; and more marketing funds can be allocated to increase the performance of that channel.

Cost per lead

How much does it cost to get a new customer? Is it higher or lower than the income generated per customer? These are some of the critical questions that need to be asked while trying to acquire a new set of customers. If the cost of getting a new customer is higher than the revenue generated by that customer, then the business is going to have a problem. Spending five dollars, for instance, on a customer who only makes a one-time purchase of any amount less than five dollars is a waste.

However, if the same customer that was acquired at five dollars spends about fifteen dollars to make a purchase on the website, that is good because it will improve returns on marketing investments. For such customers, extra effort has to be put to secure them as a returning customer.