Turn marketing into sales

 5 essential marketing metrics you should be measuring

There are metrics, and then there are metrics.

Why the right metrics make a difference.

Simply knowing your page views and click-throughs is not sufficient; isolated data points might go down well in status meetings, but they can’t really tell you if you’re getting a good ROI from your marketing spend. You need metrics that tell a story and show you a more detailed picture of your marketing efforts. By using web and marketing analytics tools, you can track and drill down into the metrics that will help you understand the customer trip and identify what sort of content and which channels are contributing to the bottom line. Nonetheless, exactly what should you be measuring?

The five essential marketing metrics

Revenue

• Cost per lead. Rather than using this as a general figure, filter it down to establish the cost per lead for each channel and identify which are the most cost effective. You shouldn’t, however, cut back a channel simply because it costs more per lead; you might find that customers from that channel spend more or more often than customers from another, less costly channel.
• Website traffic to lead ratio. Page views and unique visitor numbers might look good in a report but they can’t tell you much. Look to see where visitors are actually coming from – direct, referral or organic – what they’re doing when they arrive and how many are being converted into leads and customers. If you want to break it down further, define your marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs) to establish the quality and readiness of the leads you’re generating.
• Landing page conversion rates. This helps you establish whether your content and landing pages are resonating with your personas. You can then tinker with them, changing each bit at a time to see what clicks – is it the wrong offer? Could the wording and layout be improved? Should the ‘download’ button be more obvious? You can then breakdown your leads based on which offer/s they’ve completed.
• Customer lifetime value and churn rate. Knowing how many customers you have is all well and good, but how much and how often are they buying? And for how long do they remain a customer? If you’re losing customers or they’re only making one-off purchases, you need to work on your post-purchase nurturing. Content marketing means more than just buttering up leads.

Converting analytics into action

Of course, stats mean nothing if you don’t do something with them.

Measuring these metrics should be an integral part of your marketing strategy.Getting to the people and journeys behind the numbers delivers insights that help you to patch up the leaky funnel and direct investment into the most successful methods more intelligently.