There are metrics that marketers have been keeping tabs on since the beginning. These include such things as return on investment, conversions, qualified leads, and customer acquisition costs. Plus, there are all those common new metrics that sprang up with the rise of digital marketing. These are things like website visits and social media shares.
But there are other, less obvious metrics out there that all marketers, regardless of industry should be tracking. Here are give you should consider:
Net Promoter Score
We all know that positive word of mouth is worth its weight in gold. And while we can gauge who’s being positively talked about via social media and product reviews, the net promoter score (NPS) will clue you in to customer engagement with near pinpoint accuracy.
The NPS itself is a scoring index ranging from -100 to +100. It tracks, among other things, whether customers are recommending a brand’s products to others, their overall satisfaction rates, as well as brand loyalty. This survey includes one single question, and the participant rates their answer on a number scale. Maybe the question is, “On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this product to a friend or colleague?” and the participant responds by selecting a number. Depending on their answer, the participant is placed in one of three categories:
- Detractors
- Passives
- Promoters
It’s the “promoters” you want, as those who answer 9 or 10 fall into that category. They are enthusiastic about your product or service and will recommend it to friends. Now, to determine the overall NPS, subtract the ratio of detractors from promoters and you will have that final score between -100 and +100.
Free trial signups
If you’re a digital marketer you’re likely monitoring your email signups as well as the open and click rates. But there’s one metric that cuts to the heart of true engagement: free trial signups. Say you offer a great new piece of sales automation software. Your email marketing numbers will tell you how many are opening emails with a relevant and catchy subject line. However, the number of free-trial signups will tell you how many people are actually engaging with your product. You can draw a direct line from this metric to those qualified leads you hold so dear.
Channel-specific traffic
In the “acquisition” section of Google Analytics you’ll find a tool that will segment all your traffic across various channels according to point of origin. This is vital for those full-scale marketing campaigns that incorporate websites, social media, email and the rest. There are four principal channels to keep an eye on here, and they include
- Direct website visits
- Referrals (including links from other websites)
- Organic visitors (those who found your website after a search)
- Social media engagement
Keeping an eye on this will tell you, among other things, how effective your SEO is, your popularity on social media, and the effects of your content and email marketing.
Website bounce rates
Of course you track the number of visitors to your website, but just as crucial are the bounce rates for said site. This metric tallies the number of people who arrive at your website and immediately “bounce” (leave). What this tells you is what your site is not doing. If bounce rates are high that means your site isn’t engaging people’s attention; it’s not offering them something they want or solving a problem for them.
Sometimes this can be chalked up to a failure of creativity. Maybe you just have a bland, uninteresting website. Or, worse, you have a website not optimized for mobile, so those smartphone users (who now represent even more internet surfers than desktop computer users), can’t even view your website so they just leave. A compelling, mobile-compatible website is crucial in today’s day and age. Also, new technologies continue to revolutionize the web UX experience. Check out this article on some big UX design trends to give you some ideas of how better to tweak your site.
CLV to CAC ratio
We mentioned above that customer acquisition costs (CAC) are one of the prime metrics any good marketer is likely already tracking. But you may not be looking at that metric where it concerns the customer lifetime value (CLV). This is crucial, as the ratio of CLV to CAC will tell you more about your business’ overall sustainability than mere acquisition costs will.
If you’re acquiring a lot of new customers but few of them become repeat buyers or evangelicals for your brand, then those CAC metrics don’t portend much success for your business down the line. The key is to increase your CLV, and then you can feel comfortable about those acquisition costs.
Conclusion
What the above illustrates is that there are a number of metrics out there. They may not all be obvious, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of your attention. And the more of these you track the more you will gain an in-depth understanding of where all your efforts are succeeding and where they’re falling short.
