Every savvy entrepreneur knows that marketing is instrumental for a business. Be it a new or seasoned company, you have to gear up for promotional campaigns constantly. There was a time when the mere mention of the term “marketing” would often worry business persons. The reason being, it was a very challenging task, especially for small businesses. Luckily, we have bid farewell to that era. All thanks to the inception of digital marketing tools.

Today, brands can craft captivating campaigns and get eyeballs across the globe on a budget. You can even incorporate customer insights to turn your promotions virtually irresistible for customers. However, most organizations are so caught up in the marketing process that they barely dive into performance metrics. 

Tabbing into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) could balloon up the ROI because they provide you an aerial view of the digital marketing policy. That way, you can easily find the loopholes and subsequently take them out of the equation. But this task is easier said than done. Online marketing includes a range of performance metrics, and people lack an idea regarding the ones worth taking into account. Well, if you are also going through a similar dilemma, you will have a lot of clarity by the end of this write-up:        

Bounce Rate 

When someone clicks on a webpage and immediately walks away, it would be considered a bounce visit. Keeping track of bounce rate can sketch a vivid picture of user experience. Though it is virtually impossible to reduce the bounce rate to zero, you should now allow it to go beyond a specific limit. 

The ideal bounce rate varies from website to website. But, as a rule of thumb, anything under 40 percent is acceptable. Suppose the traffic checker shows that you are keeping up with a higher bounce rate than this. In that case, there is a good chance you are losing considerable traffic. Here are some tried and trusted measures to bring the bounce rate to an ideal threshold: 

• Improve page load time: Technology has promoted a sense of urgency among people. They want to complete tasks quickly. So if a webpage takes too long to load, it can be a massive turn-off for visitors. It stands particularly true for mobile users. Various studies have found that you can significantly cut the bounce rate by enabling website pages to load within 2 seconds.
• Enrich content: A large part of user engagement has to do with content readability. For online readers, a crisp and well-researched blog with poor formatting is unacceptable. Breaking down the content in subheadings, bullet points, and smaller paragraphs are some of the go-to ways to enhance readability. 
• Keep popups at bay: As time goes by, people are beginning to develop more distaste towards popups. It is because they hamper the user experience big time. What is more, marketers are embedding inappropriate language in their popups, which fuels the immediate exit.         

Lead Generation  

Contrary to the past, flashy advertisements do not convince customers to buy products and services today. If anything, such aggressive sales pitches only prove to be counterproductive. Modern-day consumers have a knack for making smart purchasing decisions. 

So you must provide them pitch-perfect information about respective commodities and develop relationships to win their trust over time. That is why lead generation has become one of the top priorities for businesses. Hence, tapping into leads could indicate the performance of online marketing. 

People generally count the number of leads and associate it with the overall campaign’s success or failure. Well, this is not the right approach. You should emphasize the quality of leads instead of their quantity. After all, what is the point of accumulating thousands of leads if prospects are not helping you meet business objectives?

As far as evaluating the quality of a lead, there are chiefly two ways to determine revenue potential and closing potential. Revenue potential entails how much revenue you can generate from a lead. On the other hand, closing potential denotes how much effort is required to convert a lead.    

Backlinks 

Digital marketing has been evolving ever since its inception. Entrepreneurs have embraced new ways to promote their brands over time. Despite the rapid changes in the online marketing world, some old tactics are still going strong. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is undoubtedly one of them. Businesses are heavily investing in SEO because it diversifies their reach. Perhaps the best thing about SEO is that it attracts organic traffic, which increases the odds of generating a better conversion rate.  

Backlinks are an integral component of SEO. They play a vital role in boosting your search engine ranking. As a result, it is a must to keep an eye on them. Assessing backlinks is essential for two fundamental reasons. Firstly, you can learn about authoritative websites and improve relationships to devise a future link-building strategy. Secondly, you will have spammy backlinks under your radar and can get rid of them right off the bat.    

Are you wondering how to monitor backlinks? The internet offers various tools to help with this, and most of them do not even cost a dime.

Social Media Performance 

Social media used to be a source of chit-chat and to ward off boredom among the masses. But that is not the case anymore. Organizations are seizing on Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc., to gain maximum traction.

Digging up the following elements can reveal how well you are doing on social media:

• Shares 
• Comments
• Likes 
• Mentions
• Number of followers 
• Downloading content 
• Conversion rate

You do not necessarily have to rely on a separate tool to come to terms with these insights. Almost all social media sites have their analytical dashboard where you can see everything in detail. Remember, all social media channels might not align with the nature of your business. Thus, do not bother tracking data of all of them.    

The Final Verdict 

It is the hallmark of a prudent marketer to come up with innovative ways to grab public attention. But how can you decide whether your marketing strategy is hitting the bullseye or not? There is no better way to unpack this question than taking a nosedive into the factors mentioned above. In today’s highly digitized era, ensuring a prominent online presence is critical to yielding lucrative returns.