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Reporting, KPIs & ROI: Marketing in a digital world and what to track

4 mins read

Sometimes, it feels like the marketing world is one acronym after another — that can get a little daunting when it comes to reporting on your work. When looking at all of your channels, one thing to remember is that you can measure every marketing action. You just need to know which ones will have the biggest impact.

While ROI and KPIs may seem similar, tracking your KPIs gives you a guide to staying on course with your marketing efforts, whereas ROI looks back at the bigger picture. By establishing the right KPIs, you can improve your chances of success and ensure a positive ROI. 

 

So what should you measure?

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) 

There’s another acronym for you. CAC is the total spend required to convert a potential customer into a paying one. Sounds simple, right? Well, it can get a little complicated when you realise it means measuring every metric for every channel you use, from Facebook and Twitter to email marketing and paid advertising.

For organic traffic, you want to make sure you keep an eye on the Google Search Results Page (SERP) and your Domain Authority (DA) so you know your customers can find you.

This is a long-term investment because the results don’t change overnight — as much as some SEO marketers wish they would — but with a consistent strategy, it'll lend more credibility to your content and, in turn, to you. 

As the name suggests, paid traffic requires a bigger budget depending on the ads and the reach you want. Your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns are a great way to get your specific products or services out there to the people who want to buy them and it’s easy to see the results.

You’ll measure your campaign spend, the leads converted from that campaign and how many of those leads turn into paying customers. On the other side of paid ads is social media, with platforms like Facebook Business Suite being a great tool to get in front of your customers where they live. 

Open and click-through rates are the main KPIs for email marketing as a solid indicator of your existing customers’ engagement. If you have a declining open rate, you may need to tweak your subject lines or perhaps you’re sending too many emails and alienating your audience.

roi and kpis

Keeping an eye on these metrics can help you refine your email marketing strategy to keep your customers engaged. 

 

Landing page conversion 

While it may feel like there are already plenty of things to cover on your website, including bounce rate and session length, your landing page is distinct from your main website and can be a great marketing tool.

You can limit your customers' options and guide them to a specific action, meaning landing pages can be easier to measure and evaluate. Your customer landed on the page and you want them to sign up for your newsletter — did they do it or not? 

Also consider how they reached that page. Was it organic search or did they find you through a paid social post? Your brand awareness is essential because it could make the difference between a conversion and someone leaving your page and never coming back. 

Measuring multiple landing pages can show you what content is working and what isn’t. Like a lot of digital marketing, it’s all about trying new things and seeing how those changes perform against your existing metrics. 

 

Social media performance

Digital marketers rely on social media and developing an effective strategy is essential for a successful ROI. Your views, engagement, and clicks will tell you if your content is working and you can measure against that when you’re posting to see the best time for the best engagement. 

Each social media platform has its own metrics — Facebook has shares, Twitter has retweets — and all have their own reporting platform. So, it’s important to factor in how they relate to your revenue-related metrics. Otherwise, they’re just for vanity’s sake. 

 

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) 

You had to know you weren’t going to get away without seeing another acronym. Customer Lifetime Value is used to predict the profit you’ll generate from your relationship with your customers. 76% of companies see customer lifetime value as an essential concept in their business, but only 42% can measure it accurately. 

While they may seem like opposites, LTV can inform your customer acquisition cost. The higher your LTV, the more likely your customers will recommend your business or give testimonials that will generate more leads. 

 

A note on marketing attribution

With the many touchpoints in your buyer’s journey, it can be challenging to see which channel is more valuable and decide where to increase your investment.

This is where marketing attribution comes in. 

marketing attribution social media

Marketing attribution is a reporting strategy that allows you to see the impact of your marketing efforts on a specific goal. You may already measure your ROI from various channels and marketing activities, but attribution can help you predict the impact of increased or decreased spending on these channels.

This can help you develop a predictable marketing engine where you can see which channels you should spend more time and money on in the future. 

Compiling an attribution report is only half the job, though. The next part is the attribution model, which is the rule or set of rules that assign different credits for sales and conversions to each interaction in your buyer's journey.

For example, some models use mathematical rules, while others apply all credit to the first or last interaction. The type of models you use depends on your goals.

When it comes to blogging, attribution reports can show the number of times a blog post is viewed before a conversion. This lets you see which types of content performs better, such as promotions, so you can make better-informed decisions regarding using your blog as a marketing channel. 

 

How do you keep track of all these KPIs? 

So you’ve got all of your KPIs covered, but now you’re in a mess with spreadsheets and docs with important metrics scattered about the team. You’ll have to spend another three hours collating all of the data at the end of the week when you could be deciding what to get on chippy Friday.

Not to worry, though. There are plenty of systems out there promising to do just that, such as HubSpot.

In HubSpot, you can view your complete customer lifecycle at the click of a button in the Marketing Analytics & Dashboard Software. Create behavioural events and track your customer’s actions to better understand their behaviour, so you can trigger automation workflows and make your life much simpler.

HubSpot’s data visualisation makes your reports accessible to your clients so you can show the people who matter how your work is generating more leads. You don’t have to read out the entire spiel above so people can understand what you’re talking about.

keeping track of kpis

Did that attribution modelling sound a little complicated? HubSpot can help you there, too. They have pre-built attribution reports filled out with your data, including ‘Which content type created the most contacts?’ and ‘Which content title was touched first before a contact was created?’ This lets you get through the complicated task of marketing attribution easily.

There's an endless amount of moving parts to consider for reporting, KPIs and ROI — not to mention all the acronyms I just threw at you. So, finding a platform to capture all of that in one single place is like striking gold. 

 

Ready to better measure your marketing ROI?

Do you have your KPI’s but now you need to calculate your ROI? Don’t be disheartened by all of the complicated equations out there and try our calculator to automatically generate answers to any set metric.

Try our Conversion Calculator for free by clicking the link below.