So you have set up a marketing campaign, you may have worked on your SEO, published some articles, worked on your Online presence and set up Google Ads. What now? Just leave it and hope for the best? Nah-ah! To get an idea of what’s working and what’s not, it is now time to measure your digital marketing success.
Find out what to do more or less of
By finding out what’s working you will also find out what you should do more of, and by finding out what is not bringing in more traffic, leads or sales you’ll know what you should do less of. Are you focusing on the right marketing channels or should you reallocate your marketing budget? In some cases you may just need to tweak a few things to get on the right track.
So, how do we do this?
Well there are multiple ways of tracking how successful you digital marketing is. If your website is connected to Google Analytics you will easily find all the information you need.
To do a quick review of your marketing strategy, take a look at these important factors:
1. Website Traffic Stats
How many visitors does your website have from day to day and from month to month? Is it increasing or decreasing, and can you see any clear patterns connected with your digital marketing strategy? For example, did the traffic increase when you raised your Google Ads budget and did the numbers peak when you posted certain content on social media? You can find your total number of visitors in your Google Analytics account.
2. Where is the traffic coming from?
You should keep an eye on the traffic sources. By knowing where your visitors are mainly coming from it is easier to allocate your marketing budget and get to know your customers. Is the majority of your visitors finding you through social media, search engines, organically or through a referral (a link from another website)? You should also keep an eye on what devices your traffic is coming from. If it is mobile phones, is your website mobile phone friendly? Keep this in mind when creating your digital marketing campaigns.
How to find out where your website traffic is coming from in Google Analytics:
Click on Acquisition – Overview
3. Session duration
What is the average amount of time your visitors are spending on your website? If you notice that they are just spending a few seconds or minutes on it, it might be a good idea to add more content and internal links on your website to keep them interested for longer. It is good for the SEO of your website if the dwell time is long – Google will see this as an indicator that you have relevant content! If they can tell that the users are happy with your site by staying on it for longer, they will reward you by giving you better rankings.
How to find session duration in Google Analytics:
Click on Behaviour – Site Content – All Pages. The fourth column will tell you how many minutes your customers are spending on each page on average.
4. New and returning visitors
Are you getting a lot of returning customers to your website? Congratulations! It is signals that your customers are loyal and that they like what you offer. Are you getting a lot of new visitors? That’s great too, and it can mean that your current marketing strategy is working well.
Finding out if your customers are new or returning in Google Analytics:
Click on Audience – Behaviour – New Vs Returning
5. Page Views & Most visited pages
You should monitor how many times your visitors are viewing the different pages of your website. It is a good way of finding out which pages are providing more successful content than others, what is trending and what our audience is interested in. If any of your pages, such as a specific blog post, does not get much traffic at all you should consider removing it. You don’t want thin content on your site. If you believe that a certain page deserves more visitors you can always play around with internal links, title tags and keyword use and see if more people find their way to the page.
Finding your most visited pages in Google Analytics:
Behaviour – Site Content – All Pages
6. Conversions (sales, leads)
It does not matter how many people are finding their way to your site if none of them get convinced enough to take the next step – to convert. So, take a look at your stats and see how many of your visitors are subscribing, purchasing, calling or downloading from your website. You can set up multiple conversion goals and tracking via Google Analytics to monitor these numbers. We’ll write a separate post about this at a later stage.
7. Bounce rate
Are a lot of people clicking on the link to your website, only to leave after just a few short seconds? That is not great news for your SEO as Google will pick up on this (learn more about SEO basics in our previous blog post). It will indicate to Google that your site is not of value to the visitors. To change this, try to figure out why the bounce rate is high – can you design a better user experience, should you use other keywords on your Google Ads, make your website more responsive, and so on.
How to find your bounce rate in Google Analytics:
SEO for long-term results
Digital marketing is great in the sense that it can lead to instant results. If you also want your brand and Online presence to grow on a long-term basis there is no getting around the importance of SEO. While Google ads, for example, offer a cost per click solution, optimising your website for search engines will increase your organic search traffic.
Good luck!
We hope that you found this list helpful and that it will help you to increase the success and conversion rate of your website. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions or if you need help working on optimising your website and get more visitors and conversions!