You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and this is especially true for an inbound marketing strategy. Here’s a look at what areas of an online marketing plan need to be analysed regularly so ROI can be identified.
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the second last step (and what I believe is the most fun) of your inbound marketing plan. It’s now time to measure the success of the previous eight steps.
Depending on your business, you should be reviewing your online marketing activities either weekly or monthly, to analyse the numbers and discover what’s working and what isn’t.
Here are some simple steps you need to keep in mind throughout inbound marketing activities, which will allow you to analyse your efforts effectively:
1. Implement an analytics program:
The most popular free analytics tool in the online world today is Google Analytics. This is a piece of free code you can install into the back end of your website, that measures where visitors come from.
Once you become familiar with this free tool, you may choose to invest in a paid analytics software program. I think the best on the market is Hubspot’s software, click here to find out more about it.
2. Set goals:
Your goals should be simple and easy to manage. For example, you could say you want to increase website visitors from x to y by z date.
3. Identify opportunities:
When reviewing your inbound marketing activities, decide which areas you’d like to see an improvement in. Would you like to see more visitors to your blog? Do you want more visitors to convert to leads by downloading your free webinar?
Always be on the look out for new ways to engage people and move them through your sales cycle.
4. Refine your strategy:
Assess how each individual project has performed and make any necessary changes with the intention of achieving your overall marketing goals. It’s important you realise the importance of doing less of what is not working and more of what does work.
Online marketing is a journey and cannot be rushed. Over time the small successes you see will compound, so remember to be patient.
So, just what should you be measuring?
1. Website grade:
Complete an assessment of your website to locate areas of improvement. My business can provide a free audit, just click here to find out more. This audit will give your website a score out of 100 percent and highlight what’s working and what could be improved upon.
2. Visitors:
How many people are coming to your website? Where are they coming from?
If 99 percent of your traffic comes from Google, you could end up in trouble if they change their policies, as this is too heavy on the search engine.
You need to strike a balance as to where your traffic comes from: For example, from social media, other search engines, and PPC advertising services.
3. Leads:
How many of the visitors that arrive on your website convert into prospects or leads? This number should be growing every day as you market your business with valuable content.
4. Customers:
How many of the leads that came from your site in a specific period actually bought a product or service from you? This is the most important number, and you should be focused on increasing the number of leads that turn into customers, is the best way to grow sales.
5. Traffic, leads and sales by keywords:
You might remember at the beginning of this series we identified your keywords? Now’s the time to see which of those keywords delivered visitors to your site. Google Analytics will give you this information, but if you’d like to delve deeper and find out which keywords delivered sales you’ll need to invest in an inbound marketing CRM software like Hubspot.
6. Cost per acquisition:
Do you know how much it costs you to acquire a new customer? If a new customer spends $1000 with you and your costs to provide them with the relevant product or service is $500 you can work out how much you would like to spend on marketing (either online or offline) to get a new customer.
On average, inbound marketing leads are 62 percent less expensive than traditional marketing methods.
7. New versus existing customers:
Of all the visitors coming to your website, you need to analyse how many are new and how many are repeat visitors.
Generally, new visitors come via the search engines and returning visitors have come back directly because you’ve given them a good reason to come back to your website.
If you would like to know more about how to measure your inbound marketing efforts drop us a line today – sales@getfocusedconsulting.com.au
