Did you know that nearly two-thirds of B2B companies outsource a portion of their marketing? It makes sense to rely on experts to get the best results. Have a clear objective, set KPIs and outsource marketing to a reliable agency or freelance expert. Just like any other outsourcing, you need to continuously assess the impact and effectiveness of digital marketing outsourcing. What digital marketing metrics or KPIs should you monitor? Being digital, you have access to everything you could ask for. Let us break down the key digital marketing KPIs you should focus on to assess performance and impact.
Table 1: Digital Marketing KPI Categories
| Reach | Conversion | Cost |
| Impressions Traffic (number of visitors) Traffic by source New vs. Returning Visitors | Click Through Rate (CTR) Conversion % Goal Completion % | Cost per Click (CPC) Cost per Lead (CPL) Cost per Acquisition (CPA) Return on Ad Spend (RoaS) |
Reach: measure the reach of your digital marketing campaigns
The first parameter to assess the impact of your digital marketing campaigns is to monitor the reach. How many people or users saw your content or online advertisement? How many people received your email? How many of those interacted or engaged with the content or ad? Did they like or share? How many users posted a comment or clicked on a link?
You would need to break down the number of users who visit your website by source. What source gets you the most traffic?
Metrics to measure Reach
- Impressions: number of users who saw your ad on a search engine (Google, Bing etc.), a social network (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube etc.) or other websites part of the online ad display network. Number of impressions are the measure of total reach for your online advertisement or content. If brand awareness is your key objective, you would want prospective customers to see your ad multiple times within a specific time period.
- Traffic to the website: this measures the total number of visitors to your website. How many users visit your website, either directly or by clicking on a link or search listing
- Traffic by source (picture 1): this measures the number of visitors to your website from each source:
- Organic: these are users who search for your company, product or a general query and click on the subsequent organic search listings on Google, Bing etc. to land on your website.
- Direct: these are users who directly type your website url in the browser to visit your website
- Paid: these are users who interact with a paid ad on search engines or social media and land on your website
- Email: this measures traffic that comes from email campaigns
- Referral: this measures traffic that comes to your website from links on other websites such as classified websites, blogs, online forums or any other website that links back to your website
- New vs Returning Visitors: it is important to track the percentage of new vs returning visitors. Based on your business category and objective, you would either want more new or recurring visitors.
Conversion: assess the impact of your digital marketing campaigns
Conversion % helps you assess the effectiveness and impact of your digital marketing campaigns. Based on your business goals and marketing objectives, you want users and visitors to take certain actions. Conversion is measured as a percentage of users who complete a predefined action. For instance, the percentage of users who sign up for your email newsletter. For an ecommerce website, conversion would be each visitor who completes an online purchase.
If an ecommerce website gets 100 visitors in a day and 5 of them make an online purchase, the conversion would be 5% (5 divided by 100).
KPIs to measure conversion
- Click through rate (CTR): this is the first measure of conversion for your digital marketing campaigns. How many users click on an online ad, search listing or email link to visit the designated landing page? If there were 100 impressions for your Facebook ad and 10 users clicked on the ad, CTR would be 10% (10 divided by 100). Click through rate measures the effectiveness of the ad copy or content. How can you improve the content or creative to make more users click and visit your website or profile?
- Conversion %: this measures the percentage of people who complete an online transaction on your website or profile.
- The percentage of users who make an online purchase on an ecommerce website
- What percentage of users book an appointment with a doctor on a hospital website?
- The percentage of users who register as an user on a new social network
- Goal Completion: Not all visitor transactions are sales driven or the final step of the sales funnel. You would want website visitors to complete certain actions that will engage them and bring them back to the website. To measure this, you need to define certain goals and measure the number of users who complete these goals. Given below are some examples:
- For a news website, the goal to measure engaged users could be to make them browse 3 articles or more. Hence, the goal completion would be measured as the percentage of total users who browse 3 or more articles
- You may set a goal to increase the number of subscribers to your blog. Hence, goal completion would be measured as the percentage of visitors who sign up to receive your email newsletter
- As a brand awareness measure, you may set a goal to make visitors to your social media profile share your product posts. Hence, goal completion would be measured as the number of users who share your product posts with their network
Cost: assess the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns
Cost is one of the most important measures to assess the impact of any marketing initiative. It is easier to spend as much as you can or want on online campaigns. Everything happens with a few clicks. Hence you need to closely monitor the spends and take timely decisions and actions.
KPIs to measure Cost
- Cost per click (CPC): this measures the average cost per click on your online ad. For instance 10 users click on your paid search ad on Google and the total cost was Rs. 500, then the cost per click or CPC is Rs. 50 (Rs. 500 divided by 10 users). CPC is determined by the advertising platform based on number of advertisers bidding on that category and keyword. The search volume and popularity of the keyword is also important. Based on the suggested CPC by the advertising platform such as Google or Facebook, you could easily plan your total marketing budget to meet your business goals. (Use this free online marketing budget planner to set your marketing budget).
- Cost per Lead (CPL): not every click would convert into a paying customer. Hence you need to track how many of those clicks convert into prospective leads. The next cost measure is this Cost per Lead (CPL) which reports the average cost you have to pay for every lead generated by your digital marketing campaigns. Continuing from the CPC example above, if 5 out of the 10 users who clicked on your online ad fill up a lead or enquiry form on your website, the CPL would be Rs. 100 (Rs 500 divided by 5).
- Cost per Acquisition (CPA): not every click or lead would eventually buy your product or service. Hence you need to track your cost per conversion or acquisition (CPA). In the example above, if out of 5 leads submitted, your team was able to sell to 2 prospects, your CPA would be Rs. 250 (Rs. 500 divided by 2). CPA gives you a clear indication of profit or loss for your marketing campaigns. Based on the purchase frequency of your customers and unit price for your products or service, you could set up an upper limit for CPA. (P.S. if you need help setting up the digital marketing metrics and CPA limits for your business, please contact us)
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): this is the digital marketing equivalent of Return on Investment (ROI). ROAS is measured as the total revenue generated from all customers acquired by the digital campaigns divided by the total digital marketing spends. In the example above, if the 2 customers bought products worth Rs. 3000, the ROAS would be 6.00 (sales revenue of Rs. 3000 divided by the total marketing spend of Rs. 500)
Measuring and monitoring these three categories (Reach, Conversion and Cost) would help you assess the impact and effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns. The outsourced agency should present weekly performance reports with trends and analysis of these key digital marketing metrics to facilitate data driven decision making.
We help businesses select the right outsourcing partners and set up service level frameworks for monitoring the outsourcing engagement. Talk to us if you outsource or are planning to outsource digital marketing to an agency or freelance expert.