What does digital marketing success look like?

One of the biggest challenges in digital marketing is measuring return on investment. We sink so much time and effort into the many elements that help get our websites noticed, whether it’s a blog we post to diligently or a social media platform we nurture with time and attention—but how do you know when you’re really winning?

Before launching a new website or digital marketing campaign, make sure your plan includes key performance indicators that determine what’s a win (and what’s not). Otherwise, you may find yourself chasing numbers that don’t matter, and ignoring red flags.

Success is Your Goals, Quantified

This seems simple, but it’s often overlooked: The key to measuring success for your company is to determine what, exactly, you want from your campaign.

Because a “like” doesn’t exactly have a standard dollar value, nor does it necessarily measure conversion, some sites see incredible engagement, without generating leads or improving their bottom line. Meanwhile, other companies may have next to no Twitter followers, but be posting charts that are up and to the left every quarter.

And for each, that might be just fine.

While conversion is typically the end game for most marketing efforts, some companies really are just looking to raise their profile, regardless of the impact on their revenue. This may be because they’re looking to promote their CEO as a thought leader, or because they’re hoping to attract a younger or otherwise audience who may eventually convert (for law firms, this is often the case), but don’t necessarily need the service right now.

Before launching a new site, starting a blog, or investing a ton of time in social media, determine what it is that you want from that campaign. Is it just to raise awareness for your company, or do you truly want to increase revenue? Are you looking to boost your SEO to ensure you’re driving more traffic to the site through search, or do you want to grow certain areas of your company? Knowing what you want ahead of time can be hugely helpful when trying to measure ROI later on down the road.

Know Your Audience

Sure, Snapchat is popular with the kids, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right place for you to advertise your law firm or investment company.

A common mistake companies make is copying the competition or following trends, rather than focusing on their own core values. What do you do best, and where can you reach your demographic most directly? Which kinds of content can you reliably create that will land, regardless of what’s popular right now?

Instead of focusing on what’s hot, focus on what works. Your company doesn’t need to be everything to everyone, and if you try to make it so, your ROI is going to be dramatically lower.

Be Realistic About Results

Conventional wisdom (and marketing experts) agree that it can take as long as a year or more for digital marketing efforts to truly start to pay off. Facebook pages take time to grow, Google takes time to catch up to new, SEO-strong sites, and Twitter followers come along at their own pace—which means time is also absolutely has to be a factor in your measurement of success. Rather than measuring your KPIs weekly or monthly, try reflecting on your wins quarterly. This will give you a more accurate idea of what’s working and what’s not.

That said, it is possible to see some results sooner; for example, pay-per-click marketing and paid ads can turn leads around more quickly, which can generate revenue as you go. If success, to you, means more money in the bank (and an easy-to-follow trail from click to conversion), paid advertising might be your best bet.

Know What A Loss Looks Like, Too

Not every campaign is going to be a success, and it’s important to learn from those mistakes. If you find that you’re getting negative feedback, a drop in conversions, or lower engagement on a campaign, it might not be right for your audience, or it may just not be the right time.

Experimenting can be a great way to gain insight into what your potential customers want or like, but if you’re trying something new and it’s consistently not working, it might be time to reevaluate.

Between Google Analytics, Facebook’s insights, and now, Twitter’s new metrics tools, there are lots of ways to estimate how much reach your content is getting. However, reach and engagement alone don’t tell the whole story—if you want to measure success, you need to know which milestones to reach for, and how to know when what you’re doing just isn’t working.

Concerned that your website isn’t performing? Contact the digital marketing experts at efelle.

At efelle, our FusionCMS acts as an integrated digital marketing platform, and is integrated with Google Analytics, which means it pulls analytics straight to the dashboard—no more hunting for the numbers or what they mean. Plus, all of our web design is SEO-focused to drive maximum traffic and generate the right kinds of leads. Since 2005, efelle has worked with hundreds of businesses to help them with their web development needs. Call us at 206.384.4909 or fill out our online contact form to get in touch with a custom web design specialist.