Opportunities, Leads, Conversions: How Well Do You Know Your Numbers

Almost everything in business comes down to numbers. Profits, Losses, revenues, expenses, investments, returns? So whether you own a business, are the CEO or GM of a company, or managing a team or project within a business, you need to know your numbers. When it comes to digital marketing, numbers are critical. Understanding and capitalising on numbers can mean the difference between success and failure.

I often get asked about what’s important to measure when it comes to digital marketing. A lot of businesses still see marketing as a bit ‘fluffy’ with no real ability to measure its actual return on investment. While traditional marketing may be fluffy, it’s important to cut through the noise and identify the real returns on your digital marketing spend – and this means knowing your numbers!

Today I thought I’d identify some numbers you should know, understand and measure when it comes to digital marketing. While you may not know the answers to all these questions (yet!), I hope this gets you thinking about how knowing these details can help cut through the marketing clutter and help realise the best investments for your digital marketing dollars. And ultimately realise that yes – marketing is more than just fluff!!

Here we go:
Take a look at the questions below and have a go at answering these based on what you know of your current website:

1. How many visitors come to your website each month, on average?
2. How many of these visitors convert to leads?
3. What do you classify as a lead?
4. How many leads become a conversion?
5. What do you classify as a conversion?
6. How much is a conversion worth to you (ie. what’s your average profit per conversion)?
7. What digital marketing are you currently using or investing in?
8. How many opportunities, leads and conversions does each marketing avenue refer to?
9. How do visitors from each marketing avenue use your website?
10. Knowing all the above, how many visitors do you need to come to your website each month in order to achieve your required conversions, and profit?

Chances are many of you may only be able to answer maybe one, two or a handful of these questions – and that’s ok, you are not alone! But taking the time to learn these numbers is incredibly useful and can be highly beneficial. Here’s just one reason why…

For example, let’s say you know that of every 1,000 visitors to your website, 10 convert into leads (whatever a lead may mean to you), and of these leads, 1 converts into a sale (or conversion; whatever this may mean to you). Each conversion (or sale in this case) provides $100 profit to your business. This basically means that for every 1,000 visitors, you take a profit of $100. Sounds easy? Good! It should!

Now, let’s say your objective is to take a profit of $100,000 per month. Working backwards, you now know that you need to drive around 1,000,000 people to your website each month. Of course, this number can then be drilled down into each digital marketing avenue (for example, SEO or organic traffic, PPC advertising, social media etc) which will all work together to achieve the opportunities to the site (website visitors) which will, in turn, generate the leads and finally the $100,000 profit target.

Of course, these numbers have only really touched on the big goal – your ROI. You should also consider (well, not just consider, but really measure!) the success of every individual digital marketing channel. Identifying which digital marketing generates the most conversions for you for the least investment can save you thousands. Conversely, spending money in the wrong channels with little (or no) returns can cost you thousands.

So to add to the list above, let me give you a couple more questions to consider:

• Which digital marketing channels (be it SEO, Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Gumtree, eBay etc) give you the best returns for your initial or ongoing investment? (How many conversions do you get from each digital marketing channel?)
• Do you know what type of material (ie. emotional, informational etc) people using each of these channels like and engage with?
• Do you know how people from each channel use your website (how do they navigate it)? And are there any patterns in the point they drop off or leave your website?

I hope by now I have started to get you thinking about the performance of your digital marketing – and how really understanding the numbers can help you set and achieve your goals. Digital marketing is not fluff! You’ll be surprised at just how much you can turn a traditionally ‘fluffy’ subject into a realistic and numerically measurable tool that can help identify and achieve your business goals.

Do you need help creating and implementing a digital strategy to achieve your business goals? Arcadian Digital is a full-service digital agency that takes a holistic view when it comes to digital. We believe everything in digital from your website to marketing, advertising, social media and everything in between should work seamlessly together to improve your ROI. We can help identify opportunities to grow and provide numerical benchmarks to track the progress of your digital marketing spend. Contact us today to find out more about our digital strategy services.

We’ll have you answering the questions in this article, and more, in no time!