Every Business Owner Uses Internet Marketing In Some Way But…
How do you measure the success of your internet marketing efforts? It’s true, most every business owner starts off with at least Facebook. Sometimes Facebook and Twitter. And this is great, but when it comes to marketing ROI (Return On Investment) is everything!
Marketing is not just about the money spent it’s also about the time that you put into it. If you get a decent return on the time and money that you spend than it’s working! We’ll give you a few ways to measure your internet marketing success.
Step 1: Determine Your Internet Marketing Goals
We mentioned this in last weeks article entitled “Best Social Media Strategies For Your Business“. The first step to determining if your internet marketing is successful is to come up with some clear goals.
Examples Of Internet Marketing Goals
- Increase Amount Of Fans/ Followers
- Increase User Engagement
- Increase Brand Recognition
- Gain New Leads From Social Media
The next logical step is to compare the outcome of your efforts to the goals.
Step 2: Check The Metrics
Metrics are everything when it comes to marketing. You should have your website equipped with Google Analytics as well as Google Webmaster tools at least.
Periodically check up on your website to see how it’s performing. If your internet marketing efforts are effective you should see increases in the following metrics:
- Sessions
- Users
- Pageviews
- Pages/ Session
- Avg. Session Duration
- % New Sessions
Make sure to also keep an eye out for the bounce rate. As this shows the amount of people who immediately left your website. Keeping this number as low as possible is critical. People leaving your website quickly is either a sign of a slow loading website, bad content or improper seo. It is also said that websites that have exactly what the user is looking for will cause a high bounce rate. Ex. someone looking for the capital of a certain state, they land on your site, immediately find the answer and leave. However, I find that most of the bounces on my website are a result of people who never even allowed the page to fully load.
Step 3: Gauge User Engagement
The third step in measuring your internet marketing success is to gauge user engagement on your social media pages. Is your fan base steadily increasing? Do people comment, share or like a majority of your posts. Are people generally excited to engage with your brand?
These are all important questions to ask because these are all the signs of a thriving company on social media. Social media is all about giving people an outlet to connect and be social. Brands have to take this into consideration when engaging with their customers. The most effective companies have built their brands as family companies.
Step 4: Is The Amount Of Time You’re Spending Paying Off?
The final step of how to measure internet marketing success is to determine if the amount of time that you’re spending is paying off. If you’re spending hours each week scheduling posts, coming up with promotions and creating content and no one is biting. Then something is definitely off!
That’s when it’s time to completely overhaul your marketing plan and try out some new tricks. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!
That’s it for this article, thank you so much reading. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please leave them in the comment box below!