1. Focus on These Numbers
There are a seemingly endless amount of things to measure with digital marketing. To make things simpler, we’ll share of few of the metrics that we typically pay attention to for Paid Search and Social Media advertising. Include each of these numbers in your report broken out by campaign, so that you can tell how healthy your bridal campaigns are doing versus your fashion jewelry campaigns (etc.).Paid Search
For ads that we show on Google or Bing, we usually keep track of the number of Clicks, the Cost Per Click (CPC), and the Click-Through Rate (CTR).- Clicks - The clicks give you an overall idea of how many people visited your website for the particular campaign. It’s a good general number to know about.
- Cost Per Click (CPC) - Your average cost per click can go up and down based on a number of factors. Some are in your control like the quality of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. Some are out of your control, like the amount of competition.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) - Your click-through rate is how often people click on your ad after seeing it. There are a lot of choices on a Google search results page, so something like 2% - 3% is generally healthy for a jewelry campaign.
Social Media
For social media platforms like Facebook, we usually focus on the Results, Cost Per Result, and Frequency.- Results and Cost Per Result - The “result” on Facebook depends on the goal of the campaign. It can be a click if that’s the goal, but for most Facebook campaigns, the goal is “engagement”. This can take the form of a like, comment, or share.
- Frequency - The Frequency metric tells you how often on average your ad was seen by an individual in a given period of time. A healthy number for a jeweler here is between 3 and 5 for a quarterly report. This is because Facebook doesn’t like too much repetition of the same ads and will add new people to show it to over the quarter.
2. Look for the True Meaning Behind the Metrics
As you track these numbers from report to report, you’ll find that you’ll instinctually judge the health of your advertising based on whether they go up or down. Understand that when the numbers look off, you always want to look deeper. Don’t simply assume that the ads aren’t working or that you shouldn’t advertise on that platform. Here are some questions to ask to help you dig deeper.- How do my numbers compare to the same period the year prior?
- Were there any major differences between this year and last year that could affect these numbers (website was down, ran a major sale last year, etc.)?
- What are some other metrics that I can look at to corroborate what I think is happening?
