The success of any marketing campaign (however long or short) hinges on tracking various metrics such as page views, clicks, and calls. Without tracking and analyzing these metrics, you can’t hope to improve your methods over time or identify what’s working and what isn’t.
ROI (Return on Investment)
ROI (Return on Investment) has been a staple in sales & marketing since the first time someone tried to sell an item or service to another person. It is a means of tracking what works and what doesn’t work so you can invest your marketing budget into tools that actually bring in business.
In traditional marketing campaigns (TV, magazine, newspaper ads) it was easy to track ROI (at least easier than it is now). You knew how many people you were reaching based on the medium of the advertisement, and you knew how likely each lead was to act. Online marketing, particularly social media and content marketing, is a different beast entirely.
First off, it costs very little to implement a social media campaign (compared to buying a TV ad). This has leveled the playing field – allowing small businesses to be just as active as big businesses. As a consequence, social marketing is a much more crowded room than traditional methods. There are a lot of people vying for a potential customer’s attention. As opposed to a TV ad where you have everyone’s attention for 10 seconds.
ROI vs. ROE
This has made it difficult to track ROI in the online marketing sphere. There are certainly metrics to track (website visits, clicks, Facebook “likes” to name a few). But these don’t always translate directly to new business. For example, a “like” on your company Facebook post does not always translate directly to a new sale. So what exactly do you track?
Some have argued that we can no longer measure success in the same ways that we did in the old days. Instead of tracking ROI we need to focus on ROE (Return on Engagement). Social media, by its nature is primarily focused on being social. It allows businesses to engage with their customer base on a very personal level (something traditional methods could not hope to do). How exactly do you put a price on a personal interaction with a customer in the form of a Facebook post, review, or conversation?
What to Track
That being said, it’s a bit too vague to simply track Return on Engagement. There are hard statistics that need to supplemented with ROE in order to get a good picture of how your marketing dollars are being spent.
At Oil Can, we provide clients monthly traffic reports including:
- Conversion Tracking & ROI Reporting: tracking website leads through contact forms, phone numbers, etc.
- Website & Blog stats: visits, pageviews, bounce rates, average time on site, as well as how and where visitors are finding your site.
- E-Newsletter: open rates, click through rates, opt-ins & opt-outs.
- Social Media: followers, “likes”, retweets, any interactions.
Each month we comb through these data sets and do a thorough analysis of your sites and profiles to see what’s working and what isn’t. We talk through the numbers and our analysis with you personally at the end of each month, offering our recommendations for improvement.
