Digital marketing success can be defined in many different ways. Ultimately, it comes down to what you’ve strategically defined as your primary business goal(s). While some business owners may find having a large social media following supports their marketing goals, other businesses may look to the volume of web traffic to translate into success.

For example, the total number of followers you see on your social media accounts is not necessarily the end-all-be-all for your business’s success. Many other factors, some not visible to the public eye, can make more of an impact on your bottom line. Whatever your goals, we’ve identified a few of the main objectives you can consider in analyzing the health of your efforts.

Social Media Followers

An old wives’ tale once said “The number of Instagram followers you have is directly related to your business’s success.” This is simply not true. Perhaps your target audience doesn’t use Instagram or perhaps you’re too busy fulfilling sales to focus your efforts on Instagram. A low follower growth is not the end of the world, but a consistently growing follower count is a sign of healthy efforts. Instead of getting hung up on the total number, considering tracking percentage growth month over month.

Social Media Engagements

A trend we’ve seen across many accounts is that the smaller following you have on social media, the higher the engagement. Engagement is a strong sign of a loyal audience and loyal audiences mean loyal customers. We typically define Facebook engagements as any actionable interaction from your audience in the form of likes, comments, shares and web clicks. An upward trend in engagement suggests your content is received well by your audience, while a downward trend in engagement month-over-month may be a sign that your social media content strategy needs an update.

Impressions

Impressions are the total number of times your content was viewed by an audience. Paired with engagements, impressions can tell you a lot about the performance of your marketing strategy. For example, if overall Instagram impressions increase while engagements decrease or remain the same, you may want to reconsider your content and how it is received by your audience. While it can be difficult to see the tangible value in impressions, consider each impression as one point of awareness for each user who sees your brand’s content.

Social Media Ad Costs

Ad costs are often variable and rely heavily on overall platform usage trends, though the cost per action on these ads is often indicative of the health of your content. More expensive Facebook ads often indicate little connection between the content and your audience. Continuous content and target audience optimization can help lower costs, though sometimes the ad strategy simply won’t work for certain audiences. Ad costs will vary by industry and ad type, therefore we manage our clients’ ads for at least 1-2 months to have enough comparative data.

Web Traffic

Especially for e-commerce brands, web traffic is one of the most important digital metrics. Most brands will convert browsers to customers on their website either by offering products for purchase, coupons to use in-person or contact forms to connect users with the sales team. High web traffic paired with low sales can indicate a conversion issue, whether it be product confusion or an audience disconnect.

In conclusion, the most important factor to look at is steady growth in all digital metrics paired with conversions to sales. Hiring a digital marketing agency like Clementine Creative to analyze your metrics on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis may benefit you in the long run by providing you external insight into your efforts and data trends to help you understand what is working and what is not.

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