Digital metrics are the numbers and data that tell you how your online presence is performing. They can help you measure your goals, track your progress, and optimize your strategies. But how do you use digital metrics to guide your decisions? Here are some tips to help you make the most of your data.
Before you dive into the numbers, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your digital strategy. What are your specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals? How do they align with your overall business objectives? How will you know if you are successful? Defining your objectives will help you choose the right metrics to focus on and avoid getting distracted by irrelevant or misleading data.
Once you have your objectives, you need to select the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you track and evaluate your performance. KPIs are the most important metrics that directly relate to your goals. For example, if your objective is to increase website traffic, your KPIs might include unique visitors, bounce rate, and average session duration. If your objective is to generate more leads, your KPIs might include conversion rate, cost per lead, and lead quality. You should have a few KPIs for each objective, and make sure they are relevant, measurable, and actionable.
Metrics which matter are incredibly important, as our business become more dynamic and continue to grow in complexity it's crucial to look at multiple layers of metrics. The metrics need to be through about holistically and objectively, what are the importance of these and how do they contribute to the key metrics which are spoken about in the quarterly and annual board meetings. These metrics also need to have materiality to the teams, this is not to say they need to be easily achievable but they need to be metrics that can be influenced by the people within the business. Above all else context helps drive an employees understanding of the metrics.
To use your digital metrics effectively, you need to have some points of reference and comparison. This means setting your benchmarks and targets for each KPI. Benchmarks are the current or historical values of your metrics that you can use to assess your performance. For example, you can compare your current website traffic with your previous month, quarter, or year. Targets are the desired or expected values of your metrics that you can use to set your expectations and measure your progress. For example, you can set a target of increasing your website traffic by 10% in the next month, or generating 50 more leads in the next quarter.
Once you have your KPIs, benchmarks, and targets, you need to monitor and analyze your data regularly. You can use various tools and platforms to collect, visualize, and report your data, such as Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, or HubSpot. You should check your data at least once a week, or more frequently depending on your objectives and campaigns. You should look for trends, patterns, outliers, and anomalies in your data, and try to understand the reasons behind them. You should also compare your data with your benchmarks and targets, and see how you are performing against them.
The final and most important step is to act on your insights. Based on your data analysis, you should identify the strengths and weaknesses of your digital strategy, and the opportunities and threats in your environment. You should also evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of your digital activities, and see if they are worth continuing, scaling, or stopping. You should then use your insights to make informed decisions that will improve your performance and achieve your objectives. You should also test and experiment with different tactics, channels, and content, and measure their impact on your metrics.
Here's a real incident highlighting the importance of Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Once at an electronics store, a septuagenarian, a mis-sold Polaroid film, and a stubborn cashier painted an unforgettable picture. The man, having received the wrong film size, demanded a refund despite having opened the package, clashing with the cashier's policy. Stepping in, I nudged the cashier to ponder the cost of acquiring a new customer versus refunding a single film pack. Post a reluctant chat with the boss, and the refund was granted, preserving a valuable customer and averting a PR blunder. The incident underscored the power of prioritizing customer retention over rigid rules, illuminating the real value of Customer Acquisition Cost.