Our world has become driven by data, and nothing is more critical than finding out exactly what is going on around you. When it comes to marketing, there’s now ample opportunity to dive into rich data analytics to drive major business decisions. No longer do you have to make choices by either guessing or using your gut and hoping for the best. Data lets you strike gold, without all the digging. Eureka!
The beauty of digital marketing and in particular social media marketing, is that it has enabled businesses to delve into ample and informative analytics, giving access to a world of information which was not available a few years ago. Data can tell us exactly how people interact with your brand, how they access and use your website and what they are saying about you in the online community.
Analytics also tells you exactly who your customer is and how you can best serve their needs and desires. You can answer questions they’ve asked, provide them with information on something they’ve requested or help them accomplish a task online. Whatever it may be, a business is clearly missing a big opportunity if they aren’t truly learning from their analytics.
One roadblock many business leaders may face is the fact that when it comes to analytics, there’s a lot to understand with a fair bit of marketing jargon thrown in. Don’t despair – we have listed some key terms and explained them so you don’t have to be a marketing processional to understand them. These terms spread across all digital platforms within a strategy including social, web and paid SEM.
Conversions: A conversion is when a user has taken a desired action on your campaign. This may be commenting on a social post, a retweet or something else that you’ve asked them to do, like fill in an online form, signing up on your website or clicking through to a link you’ve provided.
Engagement: This is the number of unique people who have interacted with your content in some way. This can include clicks, likes, comments or shares
Reach: This is the number of people who had your content on their screen from being live, and can be broken down by total, organic and promotions.
Impressions: The number of times your content is displayed, regardless of it being clicked or not. There is often confusion between reach and impressions – a user may see your content more than once, hence the larger number of impressions. Even if that user saw your content multiple times, the reach count would remain at 1 for that user.
Bounce rate: The percentage of page visitors who click the link on your content only to quickly leave the page without taking any action. If you have a low bounce rate this generally means that your campaigns are targeting the right audience and in turn driving high-value traffic.
Click-through rate (CTR): Is the percentage of people who clicked on the call-to-action link. This may be a link to your website or whatever you are promoting in that particular campaign. CTR is not to be confused with other engagement actions such as shares, likes or comments- your CTR is specifically tied to a link that brings your audience to additional content. It’s important to keep an eye on CTR as it will give you a valuable insight into how successful your content is to your target audience.
Cost-per-click (CPC): Is the amount you pay per individual click on your advertised content.
Referral traffic: Refers to the visitors of your site that come from direct links on other websites/platforms rather than directly or from searches.
While one marketer may prefer some metrics over another, the key is to choose the metrics that provide you and your business the data and information you need to make the right business decisions. One indicator may be a lot more powerful in your industry than someone else’s so use your business nous and follow the trends most likely to succeed for you.
Now that you have an idea on the different types of social metrics and have they can be a huge benefit to business success, it’s time to get measuring and tracking!
Take a look at our resources to find all the key data terms all marketers should know.