Think fast: how much money are you putting toward your marketing efforts? If you’re like many small business owners, the figure you came up with is between 5-10% of your brand’s total revenue, though it can climb up to a whopping 14%.
That’s a lot of money. Are you sure it’s being put to good use?
If your answer is anything other than an instant “Yes!” you might want to do a better job of tracking your campaigns. No matter which digital marketing platforms or strategy you focus on, measuring your outcomes is crucial.
For a higher return on investment and an easier path to success, here are our best tips for tracking your campaigns.
Set SMART Goals
Without a roadmap, it’s hard to figure out if you’ve reached your destination. That’s why SMART goals are a crucial part of any digital marketing plan.
SMART goals have five elements that help you define realistic and time-sensitive targets that work for your organization:
- Specific: The desired outcome is clear and specific
- Measurable: The desired outcome is quantifiable
- Achievable: The desired outcome is something attainable
- Relevant: The desired outcome aligns with your brand’s goals
- Time-bound: There is a deadline associated with the desired outcome
For example, let’s say your lawn care brand is focused on social media. A good SMART goal might be to increase your follower base on Instagram by 15% over the next 12 months.
Maybe your HVAC company is hoping to measure and improve customer satisfaction. A good SMART goal might be to increase your client referral rate by 10% over the next six months.
No matter what your business needs, the right SMART goals can be a powerful tool for your digital marketing strategy.
Target the Right Audience
Honing in on your target audience may not be an obvious step when you’re trying to track your marketing analytics, but it’s worth mentioning here. If you haven’t yet identified your target audience, researched their needs and pain points, and generated buyer personas, the next steps are going to get much more difficult.
Knowing your target audience helps you streamline your marketing strategy, focusing your efforts on the solutions you know will connect with your potential customers. Consider how you’ll reach this audience as you start thinking about your metrics.
Choose the Right Metrics
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are values you can track to measure your progress. Though you can track as many as you want, be strategic about the ones you associate with your SMART goal.
There are countless business marketing KPIs to choose from, but here are some of the most popular:
Lead Generation
Lead generation metrics help you measure the effectiveness of a campaign focused on things like client referrals and customer retention.
- Monthly new leads
- Qualified leads per month
- Cost per lead
- Retention rate
- Attrition rate
- Cost per conversion
Creating more targeted campaigns that focus heavily on your desired audience can help improve these metrics.
Website Traffic
Getting more eyes on your website is a great goal for any home services brand. However, there are a few metrics that can help you track your website growth on a more granular level:
- Traffic by source
- Bounce rate
- Page views
- Session duration
- Returning vs. new visitors
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
Improving your website’s navigation and design while adding helpful content is a good way to get more clicks and conversions.
Search Engine Optimization
The right cost-effective SEO efforts have the potential to offer a massive ROI. Here are the metrics to track:
- Google PageRank
- Page Authority
- SERP rankings
- Backlinks
High-authority content is your best bet for improving your rankings and growing your site.
Social Media
Because the medium is often interactive, social media can feel like a difficult platform to measure. Fortunately, a few metrics can help:
- Social shares
- Share of voice
- Impressions
- Traffic from social media
- Audience/follower growth
- Engagement rate
Building a community should be at the core of any social media strategy, as loyal fans are more likely to become customers.
Use Analytics in Your Digital Marketing Platforms
Once you’ve established the KPIs for your digital marketing success, how do you track them? Depending on the strategy and marketing platform you’ve chosen, you can harness a range of online tools.
Google Analytics G4, for example, helps monitor KPIs related to your website and SEO. Different social media platforms also have built-in analytics tools that can get you started.
In addition, third-party analytics tools can help you get your hands on more in-depth tracking solutions. For a fee, you can integrate these tools into your website, social media, email, or SEO strategies.
Harness Your Results
There’s no point in tracking your KPIs if you aren’t going to use them in future digital marketing efforts.
Set aside time at least once a month to look through your analytics. Many analytics tools allow you to generate reports that include helpful visualizations of your progress, but you can also create your own reports as needed. This process can be time-consuming, but it’s a crucial part of understanding your marketing outcomes.
What are the obvious pain points in your campaign? Which strategies are working, and which ones aren’t? Is the campaign offering a satisfying ROI, or should you look for ways to make it more cost-effective?
Asking questions about your campaigns allows you to react fast and tweak your efforts. In the long term, the insights you’ve learned can be put toward future campaigns. This allows you to take a more proactive approach as you gain a better understanding of your audience and the strategies that work.
Get More out of Your Marketing
Measuring the success of your online marketing campaign can help you feel more confident about your ROI and your results. No matter which digital marketing platforms your brand is focused on, make sure to track your outcomes and look for opportunities to improve!
If you want to make your campaign strategy and tracking a breeze, we’ve got you covered. Optic Marketing Group makes it easy for home service businesses to create powerful campaigns that resonate with their audiences, and we’ll track the performance to ensure success. To get started, contact us at 1-844-700-4781 or email info@opticmarketinggroup.com.