As we approach 2024, the digital marketing terrain promises to be as dynamic as ever, with new technologies, platforms, and consumer behaviors shaping the industry.
Whether you’re a digital marketer or a company owner, running digital marketing campaigns requires significant time, money, and effort.
A crucial aspect of digital marketing involves examining the metrics of your campaigns to determine if they are delivering the desired outcomes. This data allows you to create and optimize campaigns based on evidence rather than intuition.
To help your business stay ahead of the curve, we created a list of the top 10 digital marketing metrics you should track and analyze in 2024. So, let’s go back to the future!
What are Digital Marketing Metrics?
Simply put, digital marketing metrics are values that are used to track and measure campaign performance.
These insights support your decision-making and budget management by pinpointing lucrative channels and honing in on where to maximize conversions.
To leverage the information provided by these metrics, it’s crucial that they align with your goals and evolve with your strategy. By selecting metrics that match your goals, you avoid getting distracted by vanity metrics that may look impressive but have little impact on your campaign’s success.
“A useful metric is both accurate (in that it measures what it says it measures) and aligned with your goals. Don’t measure anything unless the data helps you make a better decision or change your actions,” said Seth Godin, a famous author and marketing strategist.
Now that we have briefly explained what digital marketing metrics are, let’s move on to the ones you should definitely follow in 2024.
1. Traffic from Different Channels
In Google Analytics or other analytics platforms, channels are the sources for where your users were before arriving on your website. You can use these insights to focus your strategic initiatives to acquire more traffic.
For instance, if a high number of visitors come from organic search and very few from paid search, you can look at shifting the ad budget to SEO. If further analysis shows that direct traffic contributes more to conversions, you have a strong reason for doing so (check out more offline marketing examples at Design Rush).
These are the most common traffic sources you should track:
- Direct visitors: the visitors who access your website by typing the URL
- Organic visitors: users who reach your website after using a search engine tool
- Referrals: the ones who visit your page after clicking on a link
- Email: visitors who find your website through email marketing, such as newsletters, nurture flows, and campaigns
- Social media visitors: those who come to your website from various social media channels
- Paid visitors: visitors who found your content through the ads
2. Conversion Rates
A conversion rate is a metric that shows the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action. That action can be: signing up for a service, purchasing a product, or completing a form.
You can calculate the conversion rate with the following formula:
Conversion rate= Number of conversions/Number of visitors x 100
Tracking conversion rates allows you to understand how successful you are at attracting leads or customers. These results will help you identify profitable channels and troubleshoot friction points in your sales funnel.
For instance, a poor conversion rate combined with a high bounce rate can help you pinpoint areas for analysis.
3. Engagement Rate
Engagement rate is a metric that shows your content’s performance. It measures how actively involved your audience is with your content. From this, you can see if you’re reaching the right people with the right message.
A high engagement rate means increased awareness and strong brand affinity, which leads to increased revenue.
Use engagement metrics to learn which content resonates with your audience so you can create more of it.
For instance, if you notice that a high percentage of engagement comes from a particular demographic, you can tweak your target audience and improve your strategy to better suit their needs.
4. New Visitors vs. Returning Visitors
New visitors are users who are coming to your website for the first time on a specific device. Returning visitors are users who have already visited your website and are back for more!
If it’s been more than two years since one person has visited your site, the next time they return, it will be counted as a new visit.
Comparing the number of new visitors with the number of return visitors is a great way to measure the effectiveness of your website and new content, although these numbers won’t always be precise.
Seeing 5,000 new users won’t necessarily mean 5,000 different people. If one person visits your site from a new device or browser, uses private browsing, or blocks cookies, they’ll be counted as new even if they’re not.
But this metric will give you some interesting insights.
For example, if you’ve run a heavy digital marketing campaign in the past month, you’ll want to look at your numbers compared to last month’. If your campaign has been successful, you’ll see more new visitors this month!
5. Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on investment (ROI) is a metric used to evaluate the profitability of an investment in relation to its initial cost.
To calculate the ROI, you should divide the return on an investment by the cost of the investment. The result is typically expressed as a percentage.
(Revenue – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment x 100 = ROI
The ROI is a popular metric because of its simplicity. Essentially, you can use the ROI as a rudimentary gauge of an investment’s profitability in your campaign.
For example, you invested in two campaigns: Campaign A and Campaign B. Each of them has incurred costs for advertising, content creation, and other expenses.
Both Campaign A and Campaign B have an ROI of 0%. This means that you didn’t generate any profit for every dollar you invested in these campaigns.
To improve their performance, you can use this information to reassess your strategies, targeting, ad creatives, or keywords.
6. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures how much you have to spend to get a new customer. It also measures how much you need to earn from each customer to run a viable company.
Measuring the CAC is important to ensure you’re not spending more than you’re making. It’s also a way to identify new opportunities and simplify marketing for better ROI. So, track your CAC to keep your business honest and spend wisely.
Calculate your CAC by totaling expenses related to acquiring new customers and dividing them by how many customers you’ve earned:
Total marketing spent/number of new customers = CAC
For instance, if you spent $300 on email marketing and $400 on PPC ads and acquired 500 new customers, your CAC would be $1.6.
7. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer lifetime value (LTV) refers to the amount of money a customer is predicted to spend with your business for as long as they are a customer.
When you measure the LTV alongside the CAC, the LTV provides a holistic view of your business. The CAC will tell you how much a customer costs, while the LTV measures the worth of the customer.
The more valuable existing customers are to your business and the longer they stick around, the less money you have to spend finding new ones.
Calculate your LTV in the following way: Average value of a sale x number of repeat sales x average retention time = LTV
For instance, if a customer spends $20 per month on your product for three years, the LTV would look like this:
$20 x 12 months x 3 years = $720 in total revenue (or $240/year)
A new customer should bring at least three times the value of the cost incurred to acquire them. Anything less than that is a red flag that indicates overspending on acquisitions.
8. Sentiment
If you want your brand to resonate with customers, knowing how your company is perceived is important.
Measuring brand sentiment allows you to manage brand reputation and ensure negative perceptions don’t harm your bottom line.
For instance, monitoring brand mentions might reveal that customers are frustrated by delivery delays. You can use this information to email them with preemptive apologies and put measures in place to speed up delivery.
You can measure sentiment by setting up Google Alerts for your brand name and other related topics where your brand is actively mentioned. Categorize conversions by tag: complaint, query, and praise to gauge overall sentiment.
Additionally, monitor social media shares and mentions for tone, frequency, and volume to gain context for how people are engaging with your brand.
9. Click-Through Rate
The click-through rate (CTR) shows the percentage of the number of views and the number of clicks on an ad or an email.
For email marketing campaigns and content marketing efforts, CTR helps gauge how relevant your content is to your audience. A high CTR suggests that your content aligns well with your subscribers’ interests.
In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO), CTR is an important metric. It helps you assess the effectiveness of keywords and ad copy.
A low CTR may indicate that you need to refine your keyword targeting or improve your ad messaging.
The CTR is a versatile and valuable metric that offers you insights into user engagement, content relevance, ad effectiveness, and the overall performance of your digital marketing efforts.
10. AI and Machine Learning Algorithm Data
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will play an even more significant role in digital marketing in 2024, enabling businesses to automate processes, personalize customer experiences, and optimize marketing campaigns.
With AI algorithms, you can analyze vast amounts of data to understand individual user behavior and preferences.
For example, if you track AI-driven personalization metrics, you can determine the effectiveness of your efforts to tailor content, recommendations, and offers to each user, leading to improved customer experiences and increased conversions.
Machine learning models can predict future user behavior and outcomes based on historical data. Those predictive analytics can help you anticipate customer needs and optimize your marketing strategies accordingly, allowing for more proactive and targeted campaigns.
Incorporating AI and machine learning algorithm data as digital marketing metrics allows you to leverage advanced analytics and automation capabilities, leading to more precise targeting, better customer experiences, improved campaign performance, and ultimately a competitive edge in your business area.
Conclusion
By understanding the main digital marketing metrics, you can create a strategy with a more analytical look and find new room for optimization.
As the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve, these metrics remain your steadfast allies, guiding you toward a future of marketing excellence in 2024 and beyond.
