The Only Digital Marketing Metrics to Keep Track of in 2020

For digital marketers, the sheer amount of data and platforms that provide their own analytics can lead to analysis paralysis. It’s a waste of precious time that could’ve been used for more productive tasks.

Struggling with measuring numerous metrics and evaluating them? To help you sift through the clutter, you can start by focusing on those that matter most to top management.

Here are some of them:

1. Cost Per Lead Per Channel

This metric refers to the amount spent on attracting new leads or potential customers for a particular campaign and for each specific channel. This is the type of figures that matter to top management because it directly reflects ROI – the leads a channel got from a campaign for the amount invested. 

You could tell your CEO that you achieved the desired number of leads on Facebook. That’s great. But what matters more to CEOs is how much it costs to generate those leads. Cost per lead per channel not only tells them how much was spent on lead generation but also which channels performed better and more efficiently.

This allows you to analyze which channels work best for your brand, allowing you to invest more in them for future campaigns.

Calculating Cost Per Lead Per Channel:

Ad Spend (per channel) / Lead = Cost per Lead

Not all leads are created equal. This means when you’re tracking a particular channel’s performance, you’ll also need to keep track of the quality of leads being generated. You can get an overview of your lead quality from your sales team. Alternatively, you can get an idea of how strong leads are if they:

• Download lead magnets that are part of marketing/sales funnel
• Contact your sales team with inquiries
• Browse product/pricing pages

2. Sales Conversion Rate

This is one of the more important metrics for top management. For example, if you have an e-commerce site, they’d want to see what impact the traffic you’re generating is having on sales.

So if you’re enjoying high-volume traffic and find that it isn’t reflected by the sales conversion rate, that could signal issues you need to address. It could be a slow loading landing page or an issue with your shopping cart. Whatever it may be, finding out what your sales conversion is can help you identify potential issues that are hindering conversion.

Important note:

To track your online transactions, you’ll need to implement the Google Analytics JavaScript code on your site. This provides you with a user-friendly dashboard displaying your key metrics.

Source: https://marketingplatform.google.com

Once you’ve set up Google Analytics, it will calculate the percentage of visits that resulted in transactions. To see this, to Conversions section and click on the Ecommerce tab.

For more information on how to set up e-commerce tracking, click here.

3. Lead Conversion Rate

Of course, not everything that matters is reflected by sales. Lead conversions like email opt-ins, downloads, and account signups are also a valuable metric to keep track of. This is important because top management needs to know how the company’s digital marketing efforts are translating into sales.

Establishing goals for individual landing pages is a great way to keep track of targeted leads that you can feed your sales team. Google Analytics calculates what percentage of visits results in achieving a specific goal.

Going back to the e-commerce conversion rate example above, you can find this on Google Analytics by:

1. Going to the conversions section
2. Clicking on goals
3. Selecting the goal under the Overview tab

The goal conversion rate will be displayed as such:

4. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS is the ROI you get from your total ad spend. It describes the profits from, or those attributable, to advertising campaigns. It also serves as a concrete representation of a marketing campaign’s effectiveness.

Calculating ROAS:

Revenue (produced by advertising) / Cost of advertising = ROAS

Similar to the way cost per lead per channel identifies which channels are performing best, ROAS gives you an idea of whether certain types of advertising is worth the money spent on them.

Of course, a number of other metrics reflect the performance of marketing efforts, but when it comes to the bottom line (those that drive revenue forward), the above are some of the best representations of performance.

5. Bonus: Top Digital Marketing Trends to Look Out For in 2020

Facebook and Instagram

Despite the data security concerns and the public outcry against Facebook last year, the social media giant remains the top social channel in the U.S. But for marketers, it’s important to note that 41% of Facebook users are over the age of 65. This means that if you’re looking to tap into a younger demographic, Facebook may not be the ideal space to execute a campaign.

That’s where Facebook-owned Instagram comes in, with the majority of its user base below 45 years of age. In 2018, Instagram enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity, thanks in large part to its Stories format. The temporary content and its host of entertaining features have reached over 400 million daily active users. And if you’ve viewed Stories recently, you’ll see that advertisers have taken notice by the throngs – with every other story being a paid ad.

If you don’t have an Instagram Story strategy, you’re doing it wrong.

Affiliate Marketers

From our own experiences we know it's difficult to connect your affiliate conversion data into the platforms you're using.  But since 2020 this has changed when we came across a new start-up that helps affiliate marketers in solving this problem.

Wecantrack.com helps marketers in connecting all the platforms they are using into one affiliate dashboard. By simply inserting the API credentials from the affiliate networks you're using, and enabling Google Analytics within their platform. You are able to see all your affiliate sales contributed to the right traffic sources. This opens new online marketing opportunities like partnerships and/or targeted Google- and Facebook Ads campaigns.

Chatbots and AI

As people get more and more acclimated to interacting with chatbots, you’re going to have to look into incorporating it into your own strategies (if you haven’t yet). Chatbots have evolved from mainly answering the most basic queries to helping generate sales with simple product suggestions. And as the tech continues to improve, expect even more functionalities that will only increase its usage.

Source: https://voluum.com

Similarly, AI continues to evolve, especially when it comes to practical applications for digital marketing. Some of its abilities range from segmenting audiences and personalizing content to programmatic ad buying, where AI analyzes which audiences are most likely to engage with an ad.

AI may not yet be for every company, but it’s a technology that’s certainly worth looking into.  

Video Marketing

Last year, it was found that 73% of Americans watch YouTube. That’s a quarter of the U.S. population watching videos. That’s how powerful video can be as a marketing tool. What you must keep in mind, though, is that you need to integrate your videos across all your social channels to optimize its effectiveness.

For example, you can also use longer-form videos on Stories, as Instagram has introduced a feature that automatically splices longer videos to Stories length.

Influencer Marketing

While users have increasingly leaned towards authenticity and social proof, it doesn’t seem like influencer marketing is going anywhere. But in line with authenticity, you’re going to have to not only choose your influencer carefully. You also need to set clear guidelines for the types of post that they’ll produce.

Audiences have learned to tune out branded content, even from influencers they follow. So come up with a strategy that’s less of a hard sell and more focused on providing value to your audiences.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is here to stay. But it’s no longer just about producing high-quality content (everyone already knows that) – in 2019, it’ll be about understanding who to target with which types of content.

Personalized content for highly segmented and targeted audiences will be the new name of the content marketing game. This is where all the available tools like AI for segmentation and content generation will come in.

Voice Search

Just like how people are getting used to interacting with AI, users are increasingly searching through voice. It is estimated that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be done through voice. But more importantly, in the same period, 30% of all searches are forecasted to be conducted without a screen.

This means that you’re going to have to start looking into optimizing for voice search, as it displays fewer results than keyword searches. One way is by writing meta descriptions on your website that is optimized for speech. This way, it can read better when spoken by voice assistants.

Takeaway

When choosing which metrics to prioritize, it’s important to keep in mind that every business is different – with each having its own distinct goals. While some may just be concerned with sales, others yet may place more emphasis on lead generation.

Understand what matters to your company’s bottom line. That’s when you can begin to identify which metrics should matter to you.