Why Marketing Metrics Matter

While content creation is all about getting the words and images right, content marketing is all about the numbers. 

Who knew you had to be so multi-talented to market your business successfully?! You need to be a wordsmith, a photo editor, and a numbers whiz!

But before you whip out your old algebra textbooks (seriously, if you kept those, kudos to you!), let me reassure you that knowing your marketing numbers and calculating those essential marketing metrics isn’t that complicated.

The key is knowing what numbers are important to your business and where to find them.

So, today’s blog is focused on metrics. We will talk about why you need to know your numbers, what some of your vital metrics might be, and how to start measuring.

So, What Are Marketing Metrics?

Metrics are essentially measurements used to monitor various business or marketing activities over time. There are dozens and dozens of metrics a business could monitor, but the key is pinpointing those most beneficial for your business. 

But, how do you know which ones are most important?

Each business is likely to be looking at different things, but the most important metrics to you are the ones that have the biggest impact. They are the measurements that, with a bit of tweaking, provide significant business results.

Why Do Marketing Metrics Matter?

I’ve talked about the importance of numbers before (check that out here), but here’s the gist of why your metrics matter.

Without tracking, recording, and reviewing your marketing efforts, you have no way of knowing if what you are doing is working. You’re taking a stab in the dark, which is a waste of your time, energy, and money!

A Google study conducted with MIT revealed that 89% of leading marketers use strategic metrics to measure the efficacy of their campaigns. And in this example, it’s definitely a case of if all the best marketers are doing it, you should be too!

Your marketing metrics help you make informed decisions about your strategies, tell you which channels provide the best ROI, show you where your weak areas are so you can improve on them (or focus elsewhere), and basically level up your marketing know-how.

What Metrics Are Most Important?

Once you start looking into the metrics available, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. You can get data on just about anything under the sun – about your website visitors, your social media followings (broken down by platform), your email campaigns. And each of those marketing channels has a gazillion available metrics too.

But do you really need to know how long people stay on your website or how often your brand is mentioned online? Maybe yes, maybe no – that all depends on your goals, focus and strategy at any given time.

If you have lots of spare time, it can be fun to browse your numbers and do a deep dive into all the details, but not many of us have that kind of freedom! 

Rather, it is better to be focused on the key stats and be a little more streamlined.

5 Marketing Metrics To Monitor

Here are five of the most important marketing metrics to get you started: 

Cost per acquisition (CPA) – tells you how much it costs you to score one new customer. Obviously, this can vary depending on the channel you are using, the campaign you are running, or even the time of year. This is one of the most important metrics around. You will need detailed expense sheets and sales data to measure this one. Divide your marketing spend by the number of customers acquired.

Cost per lead (CPL) – shows you how much it costs you to acquire a new lead. You can calculate it by taking the total dollar amount spent on marketing and dividing it by the total number of leads you have acquired in a specific period. It can be helpful to filter this further into the cost per lead for each channel.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) – how much will a single person (or account) spend on your business during the entire relationship, from first purchase until last? This figure is your CLV. This one is a little more complex to figure out, but HubSpot have a great step-by-step CLV guide that you can use. 

Click through rate – want to make sure your copy is on point? Take a look at your click CTR. This shows how many times a link, ad, or website is clicked on compared to the number of impressions. A higher click through rate of around 4% indicates that your copy is working well. This data can be found in Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, or whatever other platform you are using.  

Social media engagement – having a high number of followers on social media doesn’t necessarily equate to an engaged audience, and vice versa. Quality is more important than quantity in this case. To measure engagement, you need to look at how many people are clicking on or interacting with your posts on each platform. Many of them have tools that monitor your engagement automatically.

Website Metrics And More

This is just a tiny taste of the metrics out there. When it comes to your website, you might want to look at bounce rate, domain authority, and traffic sources. For email, you could measure open rates, unengaged subscribers, and unsubscribes. For social media, you may want to look at top viewed posts and page demographics.

Marketing is all about storytelling, and your marketing metrics tell you a detailed story of how successful (or otherwise) your marketing efforts are.

While it can take a little bit of practice to learn how to understand your metrics and use them to level up your marketing, it’s well worth the effort. 

If you need some help reading the story that your marketing metrics are telling you, then reach out to us. We can help you take those metrics and ensure you are creating marketing that works for your business.

Book in your no obligation 30min discovery call with me today here