The Most Important Metrics to Track when first starting in Marketing

Creating marketing strategies might seem overwhelming. When following the initial steps of understanding your audience and devising a marketing strategy, many marketers encounter the challenge of assessing the efficacy of their efforts.

In order to do so, you need marketing metrics. Why? Well, marketing metrics can provide you with great insights into your potential customers and help you identify areas that need improvement. Therefore, to determine the effectiveness of marketing strategies, marketers need to monitor these metrics periodically using marketing analytics tools, which help them recognise what trends they indicate, and what steps need to be taken to achieve their goals.

In addition, by providing key insights about their customers, these marketing software solutions enable marketers to maximise their time. Whether it is analytics, social media, SEO, or automation, marketing tools and software are crucial to long-term success.

The 6 Most Important Metrics

There can be a lot of data displayed when using marketing analytics tools, making it difficult to understand it all. The amount of information available is vast, and not all of it is helpful for tracking marketing efforts.

You can begin by evaluating the following metrics to assess the site's performance:

1. Organic and Non-Organic Traffic

This refers to the number of visits and visitors to your website.

Visitors to your website who find you through organic search results are known as organic traffic. This traffic is crucial because it shows how your website is performing effectively across a variety of metrics, as indicated by its high search engine rating. You can determine the efficacy of your SEO efforts by monitoring organic traffic. Adopting off-page optimisation techniques to improve your website's SEO can boost engagement and traffic.

On the other hand, non-organic traffic comes from sources other than search engines, including paid advertisements, email campaigns, social media platforms, and referral links. If you want to expand your audience, build brand awareness, and improve leads and sales, non-organic traffic can be beneficial for your website. Non-organic traffic, however, can also be expensive, untrustworthy, or deceptive, depending upon the level of quality and accuracy of your data.

It is not just about getting as much traffic as possible but about attracting the right visitors. Although there isn't a precise number to determine the success of your website's traffic, your goal should always be to surpass last year's performance. Instead of growing visits only for the sake of growing, your goal should also be to build a dedicated customer base that supports your online business objectives.

2. Bounce rate

This metric shows the percentage of single-page site visits.

In basic terms, the bounce rate measures the number of visitors who enter and exit a website without engaging with its content. In this way, the website's performance can be measured and content can be improved.

A low bounce rate doesn't always indicate a positive outcome, nor does a high bounce rate always signify a negative one, since various factors can influence the situation. Although most use bounce rate as some sort of success indicator in digital analytics and web traffic analysis, the actual meaning of bounce rate is not always a defining factor.

3. Pages / Session

This metric indicates the average number of pages visited by a visitor.

It is normally the marketer's objective to keep users engaged and get them to take the next step. Whether your site is accessible and whether the content is compelling is determined by this metric. Utilising this measure is an excellent method for assessing the interest and curiosity generated by your website.

Nevertheless, it's important to recognise that the number of pages per session doesn't always correlate with the site's overall quality. For example, if you have many pages per session, a low session duration, and a high bounce rate, it may be due to irrelevant content, poor accessibility, or uninterested visitors.

4. Organic Page Views and Page views

This indicates a page's number of views.

To not be confused with organic page views (which are the number of times a page is viewed through a search engine, aka visitors discover your page through organic search results and not through paid ads), a page view indicates how many times that page has been viewed without distinguishing between organic and non-organic views.

It can be helpful to understand which pages are receiving the most traffic through page views as an indicator of which content is most appealing to your audience. Additionally, it is important to measure organic traffic because it indicates whether your SEO efforts are working.

5. Average Time on Page

This metric refers to the average time users spend on a specific page.

As a marketer, you know that it is crucial to drag people to your website but it is also important to make them stay on your site. When people spend a considerable amount of time on your website, it means that they are finding it engaging and valuable. It is also important to consider the type of content on the page when determining the ideal duration spent on that page, as not all content “requires” the same amount of time.

Several tools can be used to track this metric, but Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the most commonly used. In GA4, exit pages (when a user exits a page) and bounces can be excluded, resulting in a higher average time spent on the page.

6. Conversion rate

This is the percentage of visitors who respond to a call to action.

Conversion rates show which percentage of users completed a desired action. Conversion rates are calculated by dividing the total number of users who "convert" (by clicking on an advertisement, for example) by the total audience size, and then converting that number into a percentage.

Conversions can be from signing up to emails to clicking on chat options or purchasing. Having an understanding of this metric is essential since it is related to your set goals, as it provides insight into the efficiency of the most important aspects of your site.

It is crucial to remember that these criteria differ by industry and are heavily influenced by your website's function and business goals. A lower-than-average conversion rate could be a sign of issues with calls to action, poor content, accessibility, or visitors' general lack of interest. Some conversions may not be directly linked to revenue but they are still valuable insight.

Marketing Tools

Choosing marketing tools and software can be an overwhelming task, especially when there are thousands of great tools available online.

Establish your goals and budget before selecting the best digital marketing tools. Look into resources in areas such as analytics, social media, email marketing, SEO, and social media. Use the free trials to check if they are easy to use and compatible with your systems.

Here are a few of the most commonly used ones:

GA4

By relying on event-based data instead of session-based metrics, it is more accurate than traditional methods. GA4 prioritises privacy through features such as cookie-less measurement and behavioural modelling, ensuring compliance and trust. Through its predictive capabilities, actionable insights can be derived without the need for complex models.

To craft tailored strategies, you can use GA4 to create custom audiences based on site traffic data. In addition, GA4 measures traffic and conversions, enabling agile adjustments for optimal campaign results. Through predictive analytics, GA4 takes advantage of machine learning to predict future behaviour, allowing it to target potential customers with customised marketing strategies.

Google Search Console

A useful set of free tools for tracking search performance within the Google search index is provided by Google Search Console (GSC).

It is an essential resource for measuring your website's traffic and its overall performance while also notifying you in real-time of potential issues that can occur. By leveraging GSC, you gain insights into areas needing improvement and strategies for boosting your online presence.

With the use of metrics like impressions, clicks, and Google ranking as well as in-depth analysis of the search queries bringing users to your website, GSC enables you to efficiently optimise your strategy. Finally, to enhance visibility while preventing important content from going unnoticed, Search Console is used to crawl and index all of your pages.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a powerful tool for websites aiming to enhance their online visibility.

In addition to managing pay-per-click campaigns and social media campaigns, it also conducts thorough audits to analyse competitors' rankings and industry trends as well as to identify SEO opportunities. SEMrush tracks organic and paid traffic while also showing marketers their keyword rankings.

By integrating with Google Analytics, it provides tracking tools and assists with keyword research, competitor analysis, and retaining existing traffic. SEMrush also boosts users' website trust and authority by acquiring valuable backlinks from authoritative websites. With SEMrush, businesses can optimise their online presence and drive long-term growth.

Tracking Metrics

Metrics are crucial for comprehending marketers' efforts since they offer insightful information about how well strategies and campaigns work. Without them, companies would be navigating in the dark, lacking the information needed to make wise decisions.

Metrics function as road signs; they show the way ahead and help marketers optimise their strategies, and ultimately accomplish their objectives with assurance and clarity.