You have probably just recently looked into advertising your business online, and, after doing some research, you came up with options such as ‘paid advertisement’, ‘organic search’, ‘video marketing’ etc.
But, have you looked into how to quantify the ROI?
This blog will clarify all your doubts and by the end of it, you will be able to have a better understanding of this fairly new method of campaigning online. The blog will include:
- Google Analytics: introduction
- Bounce rate
- Click-through rate
- Abandonment
- Conversion rate
- Types of conversion rate
- Who is watching your content?
Digital marketing is becoming more and more successful with the digitalisation of our day-to-day lives.
This table above, taken from the Telegraph, shows the great increase in time spent online, especially using smartphones. In only over one decade, our interests have switched into a more digitalised version. We all know this, we can see it every day when pedestrians constantly look at their phones and nearly get killed by just crossing the road!
Right, what next?
Before choosing a strategy, many things need to be taken into consideration: what are my objectives? what are my short-term and long-term goals? how can they be achieved?
To help you clarify this, you can watch this short video.
Now let’s move into the measurement tools:
Google Analytics
I hope your company has a website page (if not, hurry up and make one!). By easily linking each web page to Google Analytics, you will be able to get a wide variety of data that you can use to check the effectiveness of your campaign. Also, this feature is free of charge!
Bounce rate
One important feature to assess the overall performance of the website is the Bounce rate. It refers to the percentage of users who have clicked on your website but have left right after, without continuing to navigate other tabs. This is a generic set of data, but, if high, it can help you to determine if changes need to be made to make this number decrease. What is avoiding users to continue navigating on the website?
Click-through rate
This metric shows how many clicks were made in relation to how many impressions were shown. To be clearer, by ‘impression’ it is meant the actual advert being shown online. This can lead to other self-assessments: is the advertisement well-written with a catchy phrase? Are only targeted people being shown the advertisement?
Abandonment
A user is navigating on your website, and he/she is about to make a purchase; but, he leaves instead. This is what it is meant by the abandonment rate. How can we avoid this? Marketers try their best to lower this number
Conversion rate
We finally reached one of the most important tools to quantify a digital marketing campaign, the conversion rate. This percentage indicates the number of users who entered the website and made a purchase. Naturally, digital marketing campaigns intend to constantly increase this percentage. For example, McDowell, Wilson & Kile (2016) argue that to increase the conversion rate, websites should promote flow as well as a psychological state of immersion into activity.
Types of Conversion rates
Now you finally know about conversion rates and I am sure you are very excited to maximise this percentage. However, before doing so, I should tell you that they can vary:
How to measure digital marketing effectiveness, available at https://www.brafton.com/blog/analytics/how-to-measure-digital-marketing-effectiveness-2018-edition/
It is imperative, to distinguish them and not mix them. Clearly, macro conversions generate more ‘short-term’ profit; however, micro conversions can lead to future sales. The main object is to get information of users navigating your website.
Who is watching your content?
When dealing with online users, it is important to understand who is watching your content. Yet again, there is various analytics that can break that down for you. For instance, if your website is linked to a youtube channel to increase engagement by creating content that is of interest to your target audience, then you should have a look at some great Youtube analytics that thoroughly displays, for example, the demographics of the users who are watching your content. Also, it can provide you with information regarding the type of content your users enjoy watching. With this data, you will be able to assess your target audience, and perhaps experiment new content of videos to realise if the latter is more engaging than the previous one.
However, there are several risks when dealing with a huge set of data. Therefore, digital marketers should carefully pick the right and most effective analytics for their campaign.
REFERENCES
McDowell, W.C., Wilson, R.C. & Kile, C.O. (2016) ‘An examination of retail website design and conversion rate’. Journal of Business Research, Vol 69 (11), pp. 4837-4842
