At a recent networking event in Ealing, West London, Business Coach Fergus Crockett gave a presentation on measuring success for your business. He spoke about how you must measure what is important to you, as we don’t all want the same things from our businesses. Measure the soft stuff as well as the hard numbers … for example, if you are growing your sales like crazy, but you are hating every second of it and your home life is falling apart as a consequence, do you call that success?
We also talked about the importance of not just measuring progress through a rear view mirror. Yes, sales and gross profit are valuable measures … but they have already happened. To take control of the activities that prompt you to move towards your goals, you need to track your “lead indicators”.
What is a lead indicator?
A lead indicator is a metric or data point that provides insight into future performance or outcomes. It is an early or predictive measure that can help organizations anticipate and take proactive actions to achieve desired results.
Lead indicators are different from lag indicators, which are retrospective measures that indicate past performance or outcomes. While lag indicators provide valuable historical information, lead indicators offer a forward-looking perspective, helping organizations identify trends, patterns, and potential issues before they become significant problems.
In the context of digital marketing, lead indicators can be used to assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, customer acquisition efforts, and overall marketing strategies. By monitoring lead indicators, marketers can gain insights into the performance of their initiatives and make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategies and achieve better outcomes.
7 lead indicators for digital marketers
1. Website Traffic
Monitoring the number of visitors to your website can give you an indication of the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts. Increasing website traffic indicates that your campaigns are generating interest and driving people to explore your offerings.
2. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR measures the percentage of people who click on a specific link or call-to-action (CTA) compared to the number of people who view it. It helps assess the effectiveness of your ad creative, email campaigns, and other promotional materials.
3. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate measures the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a form. It helps evaluate how well your digital marketing efforts are driving user engagement and achieving your goals.
4. Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
CPA measures the cost incurred to acquire a new customer or lead. It helps evaluate the efficiency of your digital marketing campaigns in terms of the investment required to achieve desired conversions.
5. Engagement Metrics
Metrics such as average session duration and pages per session provide insights into how users are interacting with your website or content. Higher engagement generally indicates that your digital marketing efforts are resonating with your target audience.
6. Social Media Metrics
Depending on your social media strategy, metrics like followers, likes, shares, comments, and mentions can help gauge the effectiveness of your social media campaigns and content engagement.
7. Email Marketing Metrics
Metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates specific to email campaigns provide insights into the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts and the relevance of your content to your subscribers.
Set up your GA4 dashboard
One of the new things in the new Google Analytics, GA4 is that you can now create a dashboard that focuses on the information that matters to you. It saves you a whole bunch of time navigating through loads of data that is essentially “nice to know”
Remember, what gets measured gets done!
Experience tells us that it’s better to start with a small number of KPIs, and to replace them as they become less relevant. You will save time, energy and confusion versus trying to measure every possible data point
Summary
Remember, the most effective lead indicators for measuring digital marketing will depend on your specific objectives, industry, and campaign strategy. It’s important to define your goals and choose the indicators that align with those goals to accurately measure success.
At WSI Digital Advisors, our team have all held senior roles in successful businesses, so we pride ourselves in taking the time to understand what our clients are aiming to achieve. This means that we can provide guidance on what to measure as well as interpreting the results. Contact us if you want to know more!
