The 9 Most Critical Metrics
for Online Marketers
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For example, should you be focusing your efforts on your website, your email marketing, your online advertising, or on converting more leads into clients? Tracking the following metrics will answer this critical question and more.
For each metric, we will answer the following questions:
– What is the metric?
– Why should you care?
– What does it look like?
– How can you positively effect this metric?
Let’s get started.
1. Website Bounce Rate
Your Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing just one page.
Why should you care?
When your Bounce Rate is high, it generally means that your website did not engage your visitors, and thus too few of your visitors are becoming leads and/or clients.
A high Bounce Rate may also decrease your search engine results rankings as it is an indicator to the search engines that your website isn’t satisfying the needs of your visitors.
Bounce Rates vary dramatically by industry and type of website; what’s concerning to any website is when its bounce rate increases over time.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows one website’s bounce rate by week. In this scenario, it would be highly concerning that recently the bounce rate has continually been rising.
How can you positively effect this metric?
Improving your bounce rate is relatively easy. Adding compelling links (particularly if you include compelling images that visitors can click) will get visitors to click around your website and stay.
Likewise, by adding compelling calls to action [e.g., forms to sign up for a free consultation, report or demo], visitors are less likely to bounce, and more likely to become leads and/or customers.
2. Revenue [and/or Leads] Per Visitor
Revenue and/or Leads Per Visitor (RPV or LPV) is the amount of revenue, or number of leads you generate per visitor.
For example, if you are an e-commerce company, and you generate $100 in sales per every 200 visitors, then your RPV is $0.50.
If you aren’t selling products or services on your website, you should track LPV. Leads can be visitors who complete forms on your website and/or call you (use call tracking systems to track this).
As an example, if you receive 5 telephone calls and 7 form completions per 200 visitors, your LPV is 12 out of 200 or 6%.
Why should you care?
Regardless of whether your traffic is paid (e.g. pay per click) or free (e.g., organic, referral, etc.), if you can improve your RPV or LPV, your sales will increase with no additional advertising costs (so profit goes up dramatically).
Also, if you’re able to generate a higher RPV or LPV than your competitors, you can dominate them online. For example, if all of your competitors have an RPV of $0.50 to $0.60 and your RPV is $1.00, then you can bid $0.61 on pay per click advertising. None of your competitors could match you (or they’d lose money). So you would be the #1 placed advertiser, receive the majority of the clicks, and have a nice profit on every visitor who clicked.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows RPV rising each month as the company tracks and improves this critical metric.
How can you positively effect this metric?
To improve RPV or LPV, optimize your website pages. Test the positioning of your content. Test your headlines and images. Review heatmaps to see what visitors are doing now, and test new ideas to get more of them to take the precise actions you want.
3. Cost per Lead (or Conversion) by Ad Campaign and/or Marketing Channel
Cost per Lead (CPL) and/or Cost per Conversion (CPC) are just what their names imply: they are the cost for acquiring a lead or the cost of generating a conversion. A “lead” is generally an email address, while a “conversion” is generally an additional action taken by the prospect (e.g., purchasing your product/service, scheduling a phone consultation, etc.).
Because your CPL and CPC will vary by your ad campaign or lead source, it is important to view these metrics for each ad campaign/lead source.
Why should you care?
John Wanamaker famously said, “I know half of my advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which half.” The fact is that some of your advertising will be much more effective. When you figure out which ad campaigns are working (and expand them) and which ones aren’t (pause, stop or modify them), your advertising becomes much more profitable.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows two Adwords campaigns. Initially, Campaign 1 was most effective, generating leads at only $7.33 per lead. But within a few months, the price per lead for this campaign rose to over $10, while Campaign 2 was consistently generating leads at just below $7.40. Armed with this knowledge, you can consider pausing Campaign 1 and dramatically improving the ROI of your advertising.
How can you positively effect this metric?
Modifying the pages of your website, as discussed above, can improve your CPL and/or CPC. Another way to improve is to modify your ad campaigns. This can be done in numerous ways such as excluding non-performing keywords, modifying the interests you’re targeting, selecting different demographic profiles to target, targeting select geographic regions, etc.
4. Number of Leads
Number of Leads is simply the tally of how many leads/customers you’re getting, and from where they’re coming.
Why should you care?
Leads are the lifeblood of your business. If leads go down, you need to know about it as soon as possible so you can correct the problem. If not, sales and profits will suffer.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows total leads by day, week, and month. You should also review this chart by lead source.
How can you positively effect this metric?
If total leads start decreasing (as they do in the sample chart above), invest more time and energy into generating new leads.
If one lead source is performing well (resulting in a large quantity of new leads), do more of it. Conversely, if one lead source is underperforming, either stop using it, or modify your strategy.
5. Lead Conversion Rate
Your Lead Conversion Rate is the rate at which leads convert into paying customers.
For instance, let’s say you get 100 leads per day and your lead conversion rate is 10%. Thus, you’re getting 10 new customers per day.
On the other hand, let’s assume your competitor is getting half the leads (50 per day), but has a 30% conversion rate.
In this case, your competitor is getting 15 new sales/day to your 10 (and their advertising costs may be significantly less since they only needed half as many leads as you).
Why should you care?
By increasing your lead to sale conversion rates, your profits grow dramatically since revenue rises sharply while your advertising costs stay the same.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows Lead Conversion Rate by day, week and month. The monthly decrease shown on the chart on the right would result in significantly reduced profits.
How can you positively effect this metric?
There are several ways to increase your lead conversion rate. One way is via lead nurturing which can be accomplished by sending emails, letters, videos, etc. to your leads to better educate and “warm” them. Another way is to improve your sales scripts, so leads are more likely to buy. There are numerous other ways to improve your lead conversion rate, but the first step is tracking this key metric.
6. Sales or Leads from Emails
This metric is the amount of sales or leads you generate from the emails you send to current and/or prospective customers.
Why should you care?
Email is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools, and when done correctly, can dramatically increase your sales and profits.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows key metrics for every email you send, including opens, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate and revenues generated.
How can you positively effect this metric?
To massively increase your profits from emails, figure out your “email formula.” To do this, review your 5 latest (within the past 365 days) emails that received the highest unsubscribe rate. Determine what you think caused people to unsubscribe and stop sending emails like them.
Next, review the 5 emails that received the most opens, clicks and leads/revenues. Figure out why these emails resonated with your subscribers, and send more like them.
7. Email List Size
This metric is simply the size of your active email list.
Why should you care?
Your email list can be a significant business asset. When used properly (see last metric), you can generate significant revenues and profits from your it.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows your current email list size and how it has changed over the past 12 months.
How can you positively effect this metric?
As mentioned above, figure out which emails cause subscribers to unsubscribe and stop sending them. Rather, send more emails like the ones that your subscribers have proven to enjoy.
8. Visits & Sales [and/or Leads] from Social Media
This metric is how many people visit your website from your social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Why should you care?
If you are investing time, energy and/or money in social media, then it is imperative that you get a return on such investments. And clearly, the more visitors that come to your website the better, particularly if they become leads or customers.
What does it look like?
The chart below shows the number of visitors to a website per month from their different social media channels.
How can you positively effect this metric?
By increasing user engagement and posting items with compelling calls-to-action, you can drive more traffic from social media sites to your website
9. Total Sales
Total Sales is the amount of sales your company generates.
Why should you care?
Total Sales indicates how well your company is performing. In addition to assessing overall says by day, week and month, look at sales by other factors such as by geography, by product/service, by reseller/vendor/affiliate, etc.
What does it look like?
Below is a sample Total Sales by Day chart. You may also want to view sales over different time periods (e.g., week, month, etc.), and using different dimensions (e.g., sales by product, sales by region, etc.).
How can you positively effect this metric?
There are hundreds of ways to improve your sales, such as by generating more leads, improving your value proposition, modifying your pricing, better training sales staff, etc.
Importantly, there are often some quick improvements you can make just by reviewing your sales metrics charts for anomalies. For example, we noticed that one of our clients had low sales every Monday. We then noticed that their AdWords spend was low on Mondays.
As it turns out, their old advertising firm had lowered their ad bids on Mondays. Upon uncovering this, they removed that restraint, and Monday and overall sales increased considerably.
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