Digital Marketing KPIs to Track in 2020
Competition in all areas of business, including marketing, is high and everyone wants their piece of the cake and this is a trend that will continue in 2020. Be that as it may, if a company succeeds under such circumstances, this success is worth so much more.
However, the key ingredient to this favorable outcome is proactiveness, in the sense of monitoring the key performance indicators (KPIs) and reacting on time by adapting or replacing strategies as necessary. With that in mind, here are some of the most vital KPIs to keep an eye on this year.
Click-through rate
Just as with any business investment, it is natural you want to learn how it is performing and whether you can make it more effective. With that in mind, the click-through rate (CTR) basically shows how many people have clicked on your ad. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks with the number of times the ad is shown. You will be able to follow CTRs for each ad you post, and the higher the percentage, the better the ad’s performance.
So, in 2020, besides Facebook which has become mandatory regarding ads, you need to get involved with Instagram if you haven’t already, as well as WhatsApp and Messenger. Also, as you measure CTRs, try to assess if a particular call-to-action is performing better than the others because that will help you adapt the strategy to get more clicks.
Bounce rate
Has it ever happened that you visit a website or a blog, take one glance at its ‘90s design and close it right away? The KPI that measures the number of people who leave the website/blog immediately is called the bounce rate and naturally, you should keep this number as low as possible.
Blogging is mentioned on purpose because a blog is a powerful tool to attract customers who might find it motivating enough to purchase your products. So, if your business doesn’t have a blog, you should start it this year. To keep the bounce rate low for your blog, start with a headline that pops and make sure the text is divided into legible paragraphs. Besides an organized and inviting appearance, invest your time primarily in adding fresh content regularly, as well as targeting high-value keywords.
Conversion rate
Conversion is where a visitor becomes a customer – when somebody clicks on your PPC ad, there is a call-to-action waiting for them and if they heed to that instruction, they will become paying customers. Of course, the conversion is viewed differently from a perspective of, for instance, an e-commerce retail business and a digital marketing agency.
If you are in the digital marketing world, the favor you need to do yourself in 2020 is to find ways to save time and focus on improving your conversion rate. This is why many agencies use SEM reporting tools on a monthly basis, they save them hours of repetitive copy/pasting and compiling information for clients. In a matter of minutes, they have a detailed report, and the rest of the time can be put to better use by improving the offer, changing the landing page design, and other conversion-boosting strategies.
Quality score
Did you know that you can save money on your quality score? If you haven’t, here’s a strategy for you to try this year. The quality score is essentially a measure of your relevance. If people click your ad and indeed find what they are looking for, you will have higher CTRs which means you have relevant ads, campaigns, etc.
For Google, this is a sign that you are a reliable source of information and that means higher quality score. This KPI ranges from 1 to 10, and from Google’s perspective, 5 is an average. And now for the amazing part: the higher the quality score, the lower the costs-per-click, which translates into lower costs per conversion. This makes tracking and improving quality score a wise investment of your time in 2020.
Crawl Errors
An average internet user doesn’t have much interest in how search engines know what websites exist on the Internet. Since we can safely exclude magic as a motivator, for the pages to be indexed, search engine crawlers that go across the World Wide Web must make sense of your website.
Google Search Console is one of the tools you can rely on when it comes to crawl errors since there is a lot of causes to these errors that are hindering your SEO efforts, and consequently your Google ranking. It might be that Googlebot, Google’s main crawler, cannot communicate with the DNS server or the crawl errors might be at the URL level, in case the page no longer exists. All in all, taking immediate action on the question of crawler errors is the best course of action this year.
Wrapping up
Tracking your KPIs is immensely important because it allows you to react on time if a strategy needs to be adapted rather than struggling to correct something once it gets out of hand. Naturally, the metrics need to be interpreted based on your business goals but together they make powerful tools for achieving success in 2020.