Are you a content marketer? Do you know how effective your marketing techniques are? Well, it is essential that you take advantage of marketing metrics.
Marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are awesome ways to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Some marketing metrics are generally not effective. Having a lot of traffic to your site is great, but it does not make sense if the traffic is not converted to leads who could be potential customers.
Having the right kind of marketing metrics will enable you to track and measure your return on investment (ROI).
As I have noted, some metrics are pointless and can’t help you with your marketing campaigns. But despite that fact, there are some marketing metrics that are worth considering.
Where to Start with Marketing Metrics
Even if you know what the correct marketing metrics and KPIs are, it is essential to know how to apply them.
It is important to set strategic goals for what you want to achieve and a time frame for when you want to achieve them. Of course, the main goal of a business website is to convert leads to potential customers.
You can achieve this goal through any of the following ways:
- Making visitors subscribe to your email list
- Having visitors create an account on your site
- Being able to determine the bounce rate of your website
- Knowing how many people viewed your pages
- Understanding where your organic traffic is originating
Effective Marketing Metrics
Good marketing metrics give the right measure of how many customers are using your products. They effectively help you measure ROI for your business or the business you are managing for your client.
Great metrics also show us the strength of our content marketing. Strong metrics including the following.
1. Conversion
The main reason you optimize your website is to get high traffic. However, this traffic will not actually benefit you if it is coming from the wrong sources. It is your goal as a business content marketer to convert your site visitors into potential customers.
This conversion goal is achievable when visitors respond to your call-to-action by taking one of the following steps on your website.
- Signing up for your mailing list
- Opening your emails
- Clicking a call-to-action link in your emails
- Filling out a form on your landing page
Of all possible actions, buying your products or services is the most important conversion for your business.
As a content marketer, conversion metrics should be one of the essential aspects of your marketing strategy. Converting a high amount of website traffic to customers will have a positive impact on your return on investment.
2. Bounce Rate
Before we take a deep look at this metric, let us first define what it is. “Bounce rate” is the total percentage of visitors who come to your site, but leave without doing anything.
If, for instance, your website bounce rate is 30%, then 30% of the people you draw to your website are doing nothing apart from visiting the original page on which they land.
The higher the rate, the higher the indication that your website is not retaining visitors. As a content marketer, bounce rate can greatly affect your sales and return on investment.
It is essential to improve your website bounce rate as a content marketer so as to retain a high number of visitors and convert them to potential clients.
3. Channel Specific Traffic
Website traffic comes from different channels. It is necessary to monitor all the sources of traffic to your website.
This step is essential to help you optimize your content for various traffic sources and lead potential clients to your website.
Being aware of your traffic sources will help you to curate content that will suit those different traffic channels. Well-crafted content will attract leads to your website and eventually help you convert them to customers.
4. Lead to Close Ratio
As a marketer, it is essential to be able to convert leads to customers. After all, that’s the reason why you are marketing your services, right? As a strategy to achieve conversions, you must evaluate your lead to close ratio.
You can calculate this ratio by dividing potential leads over sales already closed. Then multiply by 100, which will give you a percentage. It is important to calculate this ratio often while you continue with your marketing campaigns.
If the ratio is high, then it indicates your business is attracting quality leads that are eventually converting into customers.
5. Customer Retention Ratio
Retaining customers on your website exposes them to the services and products that you are offering. Keeping your customers on your website for a while helps them decide what they need to buy from among the services and products that you offer.
Using a customer retention ratio to quantify your success will help you to strengthen your strategies for increasing sales by converting leads to customers.
6. Share Rate
When your content is having a high number of shares, it shows that your readers and website visitors love your content. Readers think your content is great and want other people to benefit from it as well.
High quality and informative content will motivate the readers to share your content on different sites, including social media.
As a content marketer, ensure that you deliver high quality and informative content that will help solve the problems of your readers and customers. The content will have many shares and prove useful for converting leads to customers.
7. New Website Sessions
Your website is a great marketing tool for the services and products you offer. It is essential that you are able to evaluate the number of new visitors who arrive on your website.
A high number of recurring visitors shows that you are offering great content that is solving their challenges. If visitors who used your services once are repeatedly recommending your site, then you know you are offering great content that is satisfying their needs.
Evaluating your website’s new traffic and recurring visitors is a great way to determine the performance of your business. Also, interacting with your leads and potential clients in the right way and creating a great business environment will help you greatly with lead conversion.
8. Link Building
Link building is a necessary factor to consider when choosing your marketing metrics. It is important to have inbound links to your website content. And a high number of external links to your site indicates that people love your content.
As you work on outbound linking, it is essential to link your content to reputable sites. Doing so will help you rank high in search engines.
If your content is great, informative, and customer-focused, then a high number of visitors will convert to potential customers once they visit your website.
9. Page Views
It is good if your website is receiving a high number of page views from unique visitors. This indicates that your potential customers are finding your content useful and informative for solving their challenges.
Your goal should be to increase and monitor your page views. A high number of page views by potential clients (especially of the landing page and sales page) will help you to easily convert leads to clients.
10. Visitor Website Interaction
It is important to track how visitors interact with your website, even if they don’t immediately convert into leads.
Knowing what they were doing on your website helps you to create and initiate various ways for how you will eventually convert them into potential clients.
Customer interactions include the reviews users give your content, comments they leave, and the overall time they spend on your website.
James Nguma
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- 10 Marketing Metrics You Should Consider as B2B Content Marketer - October 5, 2017
Thanks for this article…
The things you have explained here is very clear and easily understandable.Now I got to know how to measure the effectiveness of Marketing Campaign.
Thanks, Addy for reading the post. I am glad that you got some tips that can help you measure your marketing campaign and grow your business.
Well crafted James! Metrics are something most people overlook, and metrics are a great indicator of what a website is doing! *claps in hands*
Hi James Nguma,
Yeah, This is Excellent B2B content marketer technique to serve smart today’s our real marketing world! 🙂
Thanks for the Good Share. 🙂
Thanks for sharing some excellent advice James!
You covered a ton of ground, in an extremely short
period of time.
And you definitely offered some proven strategies, for
moving our businesses and or services forward.
And while each proven metric definitely stand on it’s own,
it’s definitely best, not to try and rely on any single one, to
move us forward in a major way.Great advice! Thanks again.
Hi Mark thanks for reading the post. Yeah I agree with you, we can’t rely on one metric. Their combinations helps in lead conversion and business growth.
As a business owner it is essential to measure each metric and gauge its effect on your business.
Many businesses are moving online. Having these metrics and measuring them often is crucial for your online business.
Its my hope that the post gave you some insights on how to grow your business
James Nguma would love you to read ..4 Great Ways To Shorten Sales Cycle
hey James. nice article.
you can also add some points in it like CB Insights, Mattermark, First Round Magazines .
Thank you
Hi Ashwini.
Thanks for reading and commenting on the post. Yeah, I agree with you. Will consider them. They also play a major role in business growth. I love mattermark. It’s great at helping build smart customer lists.
James Nguma would love you to read ..4 Great Ways To Shorten Sales Cycle
I’m more into B2C than B2B , even then I think this post is pretty awesome.
Keep doing the awesome job!
Sagar would love you to read ..Download SHAREit for PC Laptop Windows 7/10/8/8.1
Thanks Sagar for visiting the post. The metrics are great way to measure your business growth. They too can help you in your B2C. The quality of content that you offer your clients will also play a key role for your metrics. The high-quality of content is measured by the share rate your content has among other factors.
James Nguma would love you to read ..4 Great Ways To Shorten Sales Cycle
Hi James,
I believe that these marketing metrics are essential and must be followed. And I must say that you have crafted an excellent post.
Thanks for sharing.
Robin Khokhar would love you to read ..6 Industries That Benefit The Most From SEO
Thanks Robin. Yes they are must follow. I am happy that you found the post resourceful. The metrics play a key role in growing your business as a content marker. I read your post and it has informative content. The metrics with conversion rate optimization and lead acquisition for your clients.
High social shares of content helps in search engine ranking.
James Nguma would love you to read ..4 Great Ways To Shorten Sales Cycle
It is good for creators to know the existence of B2B content like. As a creator, we can create a content or a product. That’s great. But after creating something, it is better to let people know about it mainly if that creation solves people’s problems or makes them happy.
We let people know about our work through B2B marketing.
When people like what we do or create, they will be interested in buying it.
Thanks for sharing
Thanks Lavish. Once we solve your clients’ problems through the content that you offer, we can increase the sales by converting more leads to potential customers. Our work as B2B content marketers helps clients in marketing their services and products.
This significantly increases the return on investment of the clients leading to their business growth.
James Nguma would love you to read ..4 Great Ways To Shorten Sales Cycle