Digital marketing metrics can be a minefield. You may often find yourself looking at your reports thinking:
- What does this mean?
- Are these numbers good or bad?
- What should I be aiming for?
As one of the Digital Marketing Managers at AB, I’m here to try and answer these questions for you so you know what to expect from your next digital campaign.
Firstly, let’s take it back to basics. What are you trying to achieve from your campaign? What is your goal? What will success look like? From here you can determine your objective and therefore highlight the metrics that will be your key performance indicators.
From a digital campaign, your marketing objective is likely to fall within one of the following three categories:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Action or conversion
And each of these three objectives will be driving different core metrics.
These metrics will also vary depending on the channel(s) that you choose to advertise on. Each channel has a slightly different variation of objectives and audiences within the platform for you to reach. That’s why after you’ve agreed your objective it’s important to establish who it is you want to reach, so you can make sure your message is in the right place at the right time with the right person.
Digital channels include but are not limited to:
- Social media, including Meta, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn
- Google Ads, including Search, Video and Display
- Microsoft (Bing) Ads
- Native ads
- Programmatic
- TV/ Streaming Ads
Awareness
What is an awareness campaign?
An awareness campaign is often referred to as a ‘top of the funnel’ campaign. This objective is used to generate interest in your product or service and build your brand. The main aim of an awareness campaign is to increase awareness of your business and show your ad to as many people as possible.
What metrics should I be looking at when running an awareness campaign?
When running an awareness campaign, there are a few metrics that will be more prominent when determining success. These are:
- Impressions
- Viewable impressions
- Reach
How do I know if my awareness campaign is successful?
Ultimately, you should be looking for high numbers of impressions and a sizeable reach as the main success factors in your awareness campaign. However, impressions can sometimes be seen as a ‘vanity metric’. While they are an important part of a campaign process for driving brand awareness and attracting new customers, it’s essential to make sure that you use the data collected from your awareness campaign to follow up with another campaign that drives consideration or action.
Consideration
What is a consideration campaign?
A consideration campaign is seen as a ‘middle of the funnel’ campaign. You might choose this objective to get people thinking more about your business, so that you are at the forefront of your audience’s mind when the time arises that they need your product or service.
What metrics should I be looking at when running a consideration campaign?
With a consideration campaign, there are several different campaign objectives to choose from. What you are looking to achieve will determine the key metrics that will be more prominent in determining your campaign’s success.
These could be:
- Website traffic – Clicks
- Lead generation – Forms filled out
- Video views – Watch time
- Engagement – Page likes, comments, blog reads, event responses, followers
- App installs – Downloads of your app
How do I know if my consideration campaign is successful?
Optimising for consideration ensures that your company remains top-of-mind for your audience. Although there are many different objectives for a consideration campaign, for any of the metrics you’re measuring, higher numbers would determine success.
Is there anything else to be aware of?
While higher numbers are always going to be considered as the ultimate success factor, it is important to look at other factors from your consideration campaigns. For example, if your goal is website clicks, what are users doing once they reach your site? Do you have high bounce rates?
Alternatively, if you’re running a lead generation campaign, look at the quality of your leads; are people giving you all the information you need?
Asking yourself these questions will give you a more rounded picture on how successful your campaign is. They will also highlight any potential “pinch points’ in your customer journey that could be hindering users from taking the next step to converting.
Action/Conversions
What is an action or conversion campaign?
An action or conversion campaign is often referred to as a ‘bottom of the funnel’ campaign. These campaigns are focused on high-intent actions or conversions such as specific actions on your website or making a purchase.
What metrics should I be looking at when running an action or conversion campaign?
The metrics for an action or conversion campaign will be determined on what your business classifies as a conversion. This can vary greatly from business to business; while it’s most commonly used for e-commerce websites with regards to purchases or sales, a conversion could also refer to some of the objectives seen in a consideration campaign such as an ‘email subscription’ or a ‘form submission’.
How do I know if my action or conversion campaign is successful?
Like the other two sections of the funnel, a successful action campaign will be determined by the number of conversions achieved.
Anything to be aware of?
Firstly, conversion campaigns require additional tracking that will need to be added to your website prior to going live with the campaign in order to track any completions.
Secondly, depending on the channels you’re using, it’s useful to be aware of the different types of attribution models as these will vary between channels. You may see different channels showing conversions attributed to different channels (for example, direct or organic instead of the paid channel you are hoping to see it coming from).
Finally, it’s worth assessing your site to make sure it’s optimised for conversions. This can be something as small as changing your call to action (CTA) copy or position, but can have a big impact on your conversions.
Need some support with your digital marketing metrics?
If you’re looking to get started with your next digital marketing campaign, or would like us to review your current set up, get in touch with our digital marketing team and we’d be happy to help.