Measuring Your Online Marketing Efforts
Perhaps more than any other type of marketing, online marketing lends itself to extensive measurement and reporting. With this tremendously deep, immediate access to performance metrics, online marketing offers advertisers great insight into ROI (return on investment) and ROAS (return on ad spend) data. Novice and experienced marketers alike will appreciate the amount and type of data available.
Basic online marketing metrics you will want to familiarize yourself with include impressions, click-throughs (or simply clicks), and conversions. An impression is simply one time that your ad is shown. A click means that someone has clicked through your ad. A conversion means someone has taken a specified action after clicking through your ad and reaching your web site. You may define a conversion as requesting a quote, filling out a more info form, signing up for a newsletter, reserving a spot at an event, or making a purchase. Most online programs are sold on either a cost-per-thousand impressions, cost-per-click, or cost-per-conversion basis.
There are efficiency metrics which correspond to each of these baseline units. By looking at click-through rate (how often someone clicks on your ad when they see it) and conversion rate (how many times someone performs the conversion task after clicking through your ad), you can gain perspective on the quality of your ad and if you perhaps need to try new creative in it.
You can attribute these clicks and conversions back to very detailed source levels. For instance, in a pay-per-click campaign, you can see what term someone was searching for when they clicked through and made a purchase from your site. You can take that information and buy that term more often in hopes of generating more sales. You can also see what the verbiage was in the ad you showed them that led to the sale. You can take that information to create ads of a similar theme to again help try to drive conversions.
Beyond those baseline measurements, there's a wealth of post-click data available. This is data that tells us what happens AFTER someone has come to your web site after clicking on an ad. There are programs that can track this type of data, ranging from free solutions like Google Analytics to pricier options like WebTrends and Omniture. Depending on the tool you use, you may be able to find out what pages a customer visited after clicking through your ad, how long they stayed on the site, in what order they viewed the pages, and where they first found your site (did they click through from your banner ad, your pay-per-click ad, an organic search listing, or some other method?).
What can you do with this data? Lots. For instance, let's say you sell products on your site, and in order to make a purchase a customer must advance through five screens. In analyzing the data, you find that customers are stopping the purchase process on the third screen. With that knowledge, you can start making adjustments to your process to make customers more likely to buy. You might change something on that third screen - is there confusing wording? Difficult functionality? Or you may decide to shorten the process altogether - maybe 2 or 3 screens is all a customer is willing to go through when making a purchase.
In another example, you may find that there is one specific page that customers visit more than any other. Is there additional content related to that page that you could add to your site to generate more consumer interest? Knowing what your customers are looking for can make your site a more engaging place for them to visit.
These are just two of the many examples of ways in which you can use online marketing data to improve your web site and online marketing efforts in general. Online marketing gives you a clearer look into the mind of your consumer and the true value of your advertising, than traditional methods like print or broadcast. You should get the most out of them by reviewing your data for trends and actionable findings.
About the Author
Reviews of the bestselling products from Ewen Chia - http://www.stans-reviews.com
Sublime & Subliminal: Semantics for Online Advertising
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