It’s been said that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. An important part of your marketing is regularly evaluating how your efforts are performing, what’s working and what isn’t.
With buyers turning to the internet to look for promotional products providers, your website can be your main source of new business. That’s why tracking its performance is essential if you want to realize its potential in driving traffic, leads and sales.
Having a better understanding of your marketing performance will also help in setting realistic goals.
Tracking tools available free of charge
There are a wealth of tools you can utilize to see exactly how many people are finding and interacting with your website and your content. Some of them are available for free while others have a cost.
That said, one of the most powerful tool we use and recommend is Google Analytics, which is free. Google Analytics provides a robust amount of data and numerous reports on how your website is performing.
You don’t really need anything more than these free tools to evaluate and measure your results. But, it can get quite cumbersome to navigate those analytics pages.
If you are willing to spend a little money, there are paid tools that gather information from various sources into one report that will save you time. But the free ones will give you all the information you need to track your marketing performance.
These reports are like your profit and loss statements in accounting. They are not only helpful, but also important. Just like with your accounting, you want to make sure your marketing is going in the right direction.
Ideally, you want to run your reports once per month, so you have a set time frame for more accurate parameters.
What to track on the analytics reports
While the information can get pretty granular and detailed, the following are are the most important metrics to track:
- Number of monthly visitors
- Bounce rate (number of people leaving your site right away)
- Number of visitors to each of your blog posts
- Where people came from (traffic sources)
- Number of pages visited
- Sessions
- Pages per session
- Devices
- Source/medium and channels
- Page views, unique page views
- Average time on page
- Landing pages
- Exit pages
Additionally, for the most accurate information, you also want to include the following internal metrics in your report:
- Number of inquiries per month
- Number of unqualified versus qualified leads
- Number of conversions
The ultimate goal is to increase traffic and conversions. With these numbers, you’ll be able to determine what percent of visitors are taking action and contacting you, for example. Then, you can work towards increasing that number. You’ll also be able to make adjustments to your content if you are getting too many unqualified leads. And so on.
Marketing analytics will enable your company to evolve its mix of tactics based on actual performance. They’ll help improve marketing ROI, and ultimately help you reach your business growth goals.
If you would like to find out where your business stands online, Action Marketing can provide you with an online visibility assessment free of charge. You can also find a growing library of free marketing resources on our website.
This article was originally published in ActionMarketingCo.com.
