Today, there are many ways to measure the effectiveness of a campaign or a Website. Which metrics are the most relevant? Which ones are the most used by E-businesses? Which ones should be used to consolidate your « KPIs » (key Performance Indicators)?
A March 2010 survey by Chief Marketer showed the click remained on top, with 60% of US marketers reporting they measured performance in click-throughs. Fewer than two-fifths measured overall « ROI » (Return On investment).
Surprisingly, marketers worldwide were most likely to measure their campaigns through page views, registrations, and the volume and origin of site traffic.
So far, “registrations” is the most interesting metric as it can be considered as a conversion metric, however, click-throughs and pageviews are really not sufficient to understand your site performance.
Looking at the bottom of the document of the interesting ways of measuring success: content download, transactions, engagement (which is a little vague), and increased knowledge. Those are all methods of demonstrating effectiveness that can determine your content strategy and marketing channels moving forward. But ultimately, each time a campaign is launched, the methodology for measurement needs to be customized to the goal at hand. Click-throughs and hits are not a universal metric for every campaign.
Some metrics that might appeal to me as a marketer include:
- Likelihood of a customer to become an advocate for my brand
- The spread of information across the Web – especially via social tools
- Sentiment of comments generated by a post or campaign
- Effective integration of offline calls to action and online actions
These are just a handful of suggestions for different types of measurement. As I said, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. What are some unique and different measurement standards that you’ve seen evolving?
The lack of understanding when it comes to entrepreneurs understanding what has to be analyzed in order to get to know about how successful their businesses are.
As I recall it was Comcast that in answer to an ROI question said that companies often “mess up” when approaching ROI in this space.
Really liked the data! It showed that though click-throughs are the most prominent factor, that everything else is slowly creeping up from behind. Personally, interaction I believe is a key factor, especially since I know I’ll clock around sites but that doesn’t mean I’ll remember them or pass on that site to someone else.
I defintely agree that one way to track ROI on Social Networking is how often others are referring/reposting/retweeting/commenting. Not just by the number of followers or friends.
his is a simplification of the “partner engagement model” we use, but it should illustrate how different metrics combine in a strategy. They go from broadest awareness and funnels down to retaining the relationship:
[step] : [metric]
1) Reach : page visits
2) Engagement : user takes action, e.g. downloading white paper
3) Enablement : user uses a tool, builds something with it, eventually putting something in market
4) Demand generation : helping partner build leads and sales pipeline
5) Loyalty : user comes back to use more services/products, upgrading
My key point is that before you decide how to measure success, you need to know the outcome you expect and how it relates to your overall engagement strategy and business.
How do you quantify/measure the “likelihood of a customer to become an advocate for your brand?” While I understand why you’d want to know this/measure it, it seems very subjective/nebulous.
A service that would discern from the word choice the sentiment of comment in a post or campaign. And how would we determine if that customer became an advocate?
