Editorial Articles

The rapid growth of digital marketing hides a serious challenge for marketers – how to figure out what to measure and how to measure it.

There are a number of different approaches we can take to assess the effectiveness of a digital campaign. Some are useful while others add no real value. And so while we figure out what’s useful – and what’s not – we carry on religiously tracking and reporting, often being blind-sided by the sheer volume of data and missing metrics that could be significant. In addition we often have such blind faith in the numbers and the technology that we completely miss what the numbers really mean. So just what should we be looking out for?

1) Impressions and clicks
When advertisers buy ad space more often than not they purchase impressions or clicks. Measuring impressions and clicks is easy but they’re not the primary measure of success. Interaction rates, click stream and repeat visits – as well as customer interactions with all your marketing components – are what you should be measuring. Measure the entire track from exposure to successful conclusion (usually a purchase / acquisition) and your marketing efforts will be rewarded. Ensure you know how much you spent and what increase or decrease you saw in sales: this is the most fundamental strategic metric you can measure.

At this point I’d like to share a small aside. There’s a common misconception that one of the core objectives of marketing is to build a brand. And as a result impression and click data are the only metrics that are needed. Not quite. Building a brand is not – and never was – the end-goal of marketing. Building a brand is a transition metric to driving sales or increasing market share – and that is the ultimate goal of marketing. Impressions and clicks are poor measures of your brand. Although as old as marketing itself, tracking awareness, favourability and commitment are still the best measures of a campaign’s success.

2) Page views
On the face of it page views seem pretty straightforward. At the highest level it’s the number of times users visit your website. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The Internet is swarming with bots querying servers for content that no human will ever see. Furthermore, in the age of AJAX and widgets, it’s hard to quantify what exactly a page view is. Most importantly, though, users are spending more time online, generating more and more page views. Twitter and Facebook are prime examples. None of this is news (check out this blog from several years ago) but it’s amazing how people still cling to the old page view metric.

3) Customer data attributes
These are often measured, but not used to segment databases. Demographic and geographic data are often most used – they are easy and there is a clear link to more traditional marketing and segmentation methodology. But what about the way people interact with your brand, segmenting them based on this? Click and open email rates are seldom used when segmenting. What is their online spend? Where did they come from? When did they last buy from you?

Measure what matters
Some of the metrics marketers use add little or no value. And some just make no sense at all. Marketers need to set realistic goals and ensure they are implementing metrics that reflect these goals. Without accurate measurement it is impossible for marketers to know how effective their digital marketing campaigns have been and to accurately allocate budget for future online activity.

Grant Keller
Managing Director, EMEA, Acceleration