Let?s be honest, marketing is an investment. When you promote yourself and your business, you are investing a combination of time, effort, and money. Because these resources are finite, you must ensure that you get the highest possible ROI from the investment you are making.?

To do this, you must stay in touch with your marketing efforts by conducting reviews on a periodic basis. Below we will look at what KPIs (key performance indicators) for your website, social media activities, and email marketing will give you the insight you need to make crucial decisions regarding your marketing efforts.?

*NOTE: The below KPIs are not an exhaustive list. There are ones that Beacon Marketing likes to use to better understand how effective or ineffective our marketing efforts are. You may find that using different metrics may be more suitable for your particular situation.

Website

Traffic By Source

This metric tells you how visitors are getting to your website. Are visitors arriving at your website organically via Google searches, through links in emails, or maybe by typing your website directly into the URL bar.?

This is vital information because it gives you insight on how effective other avenues of marketing are. For example if you see a significant portion of your visitors are coming from links you put in your email, then you know that readers in your email are engaging with the content you are sending. Conversely, if you do not have a lot of organic traffic, then you could look into investing SEO for your website.?

Sales and Leads/Signups

You ultimately want visitors to result in revenue. Sales or leads from your website will give you a high level impression of how effective your website is in converting visitors to sales or leads.?

Conversion Rate

To get a more in-depth understanding of how well your website is performing, look at the conversion rate. Calculate the conversion rate by taking the number of conversions and divide that by the number of visitors. You typically want to do this for a particular page like a landing page or sales page. This will tell you how effective the page is at turning visitors into dollars. If you have a low conversion rate, then you may consider changing the messaging or even taking a look at the process a person takes to complete a conversion.?

Social Media

Follows

Followers are not everything when it comes to understanding how effective your social media messaging is, but it can give you an indication as to how your messaging is resonating with your audience. If you have a low number of followers, then you are either targeting the wrong audience so they are not seeing your message. Or you are not connecting with them in a way that motivates them to follow you.?

On the flip side, do not confuse a lot of followers with an effective social media strategy. All the followers in the world do not amount to much if they are not engaging with your content.??

Likes/Shares/Comments

One form of engagement is likes, shares, and comments. Even though these are technically three separate metrics, we like to view them under the same umbrella because they all indicate a level of engagement that is important when it comes to evaluating your social media messaging.?

Likes show that your content is moving your audience to show their digital appreciation for your content. If your target audience shares one of your posts, then you may pick up new followers because your marketing content is being shared to different audiences. Comments are great because it is a chance for you to engage directly with individuals in your audience. This is an excellent way to build fans for your brand.?

For a lot of social media platforms, the more engagement a piece of content gets the more likely it will get featured which means an opportunity for you to be found by more of your target audience.?

Clicks?

Another form of engagement is getting people to click on your content. This is important because this is where you start getting an ROI on your social media investment. You generally want to send your audience to somewhere in your marketing funnel. This could be at the top where they are signing up to your newsletter or at the bottom where they can make a purchase or schedule an appointment.?

If you are looking for phone calls, then you may substitute clicks for calls. Just make sure that you are somehow tracking the source for incoming sales calls.?

Email?

Open Rate

Open rate for email marketing is the most basic level of engagement. If your open rate is low, that most likely means your subject lines are not compelling enough for your audience to open them. Another cause could be that you have not earned the goodwill and trust of your audience that they automatically open your emails regardless of the email. Work on establishing that trust and developing compelling subject lines.

Click Through Rate

Click through rate is the percentage of people who open your email THEN click on something inside. Since you are sending emails to generate interest in some part of your business, a low click through rate means you are not getting a good investment on your email marketing efforts.?

Look at the types of content you are including in your emails. Make sure you are addressing the pain points of your target audience. Also make sure any calls to action are clear and that the links are properly working.?

Unsubscribes vs New Subscribers

No matter what your grander email marketing goals are, growing your list of email subscribers should always be near the top. You will lose some email subscribers over time as people move or their needs change, but you always want to be adding new subscribers faster than you are losing them. Preferably you want to add a LOT of new subscribers for every one that you lose.?

If you are not growing your list of subscribers, then you need to look at the tactics you are using to grow your list. If you are losing subscribers, then evaluate your marketing content. Make sure you are speaking to the needs of your current and potential customers.?

As you make the investment in marketing yourself and your business, make sure you are taking the time to evaluate your marketing efforts. This will allow you to understand what tactics are working so you can apply them to other areas of your marketing, while seeing which tactics need improving. If you do this, then you will have a greater chance of getting the ROI you want and need from your marketing.