Analysing marketing analytics to benchmark success

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We pride ourselves on being transparent by sharing detailed results including analytics across all channels with our clients. But how do you know how these numbers stack up and what exactly constitutes ‘success’? This Learning at Work Week, we’ve taken a step back to get under the surface of the analytics we provide and what they mean for our clients.

Our expert teams are here to guide to you through the metrics we use for measuring success for SEO, PPC, social media and e-marketing campaigns as well as assessing website traffic and crucially what these stats mean in terms of your marketing and overall business objectives.

 

SEO

We measure SEO through a collection of key performance indicators (KPIs) and insights that show how your website is performing on search engines like Google.

SEO analytics usually measure:

  • Organic traffic
  • Keyword rankings
  • Impressions
  • Clicks
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Domain authority
  • Referring domains
  • Backlinks

These metrics help you understand your audience and how well your SEO campaigns are working as well as monitoring website traffic and conversions. The stats will also help you identify new opportunities for improving rankings.

It’s advisable to conduct regular SEO audits using these metrics to identify any potential issues that could impact your site’s health and how to drive better results.

 

PPC

Evaluating the performance of your PPC campaigns involves tracking and measuring key metrics such as impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per click (CPC) and more. By analysing this level of data, you can identify areas where your campaigns are performing well and where they need to improve.

PPC analysis helps you:

  • Set clear objectives
  • Create actionable PPC plans
  • Optimise campaigns
  • Monitor adverts
  • Measure and report

Understanding and analysing your PPC campaigns is an ongoing process which requires regular evaluation, optimisation and adaptation based on your business needs, goals and market conditions. We recommend starting small by focusing on the metrics that are most important to you – don’t try to analyse everything at once!

 

Social media

To help you uncover what is working well in your social media marketing, we report across three key areas:

  • Reach
  • Relationships
  • Results

It’s important to align your social media strategy with your business objectives and depending on whether your key goal is reach, engagement, website traffic, email sign-ups or lead generation, you may decide to use social media to reach new audiences, build relationships with existing audiences or drive results by meeting business goals.

Each area uses different social media metrics to track results –

Reach

  • Reach/impressions (depending on which social media channel you are reporting on)
  • Engagements
  • Engagement rate
  • Followers and non-followers reached (Instagram only)
  • Profile activity (Instagram only)

Relationships

  • Comments/replies
  • Saves
  • Followers and non-followers (Instagram only)
  • Direct messages (DMs)

Results

  • Website traffic
  • Button clicks
  • Attributable leads

 

E-marketing

E-marketing offers a direct line to your customers and stakeholders, combined with a high level of reporting and analytics, making it a highly effective marketing tool. We’ve outlined what some of the key terms you may see in reports mean below:

Delivery summary – how many of the emails sent were successfully delivered to your recipients’ inboxes.

Unique opens – the number of first time opens by your recipients.

Total opens – how many times your email was viewed in recipients’ inboxes in total. For example, if an email was opened 10 times by a single recipient it would count as 10 total opens but one unique open.

Unique clicks – when a recipient interacts with your email (having opened it) this is a click. It can be them clicking a link, button, or image anywhere on the email.

Total clicks – the total number of clicks. If a recipient clicks on multiple links or content in the email their total interaction would be measured within total clicks.

Click through rate (CTR) – the total clicks measured as a percentage of all emails delivered.

Click to open rate (CTOR) – measures the clicks as a percentage of all opened emails.

Unsubscribe rate – the number of unsubscribes divided by the total number of emails delivered.

Consider using UTM links (which are snippets of code attached to the end of a URL) with your e-marketing so data is carried across to Google Analytics. This way you can identify sources for inbound web traffic as well as what’s proving most successful within your e-marketing content. It also allows you to track driven traffic through visits to your contact page, enquiries and leads.

It’s worth bearing in mind that privacy features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection can impact open rates. People may choose to read your HTML email without displaying images which may not record as an open. Recipient behaviour can also impact rates – such as manually forwarding the email or sharing the ‘view in browser’ link.

 

Web Analytics (using Google Analytics)

Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics tool provided by Google that allows website owners to track and analyse their site’s performance. By collecting data on visitor behaviour, traffic sources, and user interactions, Google Analytics offers comprehensive insights into how people engage with your website. This information is crucial for making informed decisions to optimise your site’s content, improve user experience, and increase conversion rates.

Installing Google Analytics on your website offers numerous benefits:

  • Audience Insights: gain detailed demographic data such as age, gender, and geographic location to better understand your audience.
  • Marketing Effectiveness: track the performance of marketing campaigns and identify which channels drive the most traffic and conversions.
  • User Behaviour Analysis: monitor how users interact with your site, including pages visited, time spent on each page, and actions taken.
  • Site Performance: identify strengths and weaknesses in your website’s design and content to make targeted improvements.

It is important to note that some of these features require advanced setup, such as configuring custom goals, events, and ecommerce tracking. However, by leveraging these insights, you can tailor your content and marketing strategies to meet visitor needs, allocate resources more efficiently, and enhance user engagement.

We hope you’ve found this deep dive into marketing analytics and reporting useful. If you have any questions which we’ve not answered in the course of this blog, please feel free to contact the team today.

 

 

 

 

 

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