Analytics in Inbound Marketing: what to measure and why

When we talk about Analytics in Inbound Marketing many doubts arise. We will try to dissipate them by explaining what to measure, at what time and why.

Albert Einstein once said: "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about the solution"

Patience and commitment because it can take months to see significant gains, and good decision making because without the analytical part we can not maximize the efforts and resources of the campaign, and no matter how much patience and commitment we have, it will take much longer to see some type of positive result. In this scenario, the question arises, what to measure in Inbound Marketing?

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Analytics in Inbound Marketing: metrics to measure

Growth in sales and profitability

At the end of everything, the best way to measure the success of an Inbound Marketing campaign is through the growth in sales revenue, from which we get the final profitability of the campaign.

Measuring sales growth is important both for the long-term health of a company and the campaign because it not only serves as a good indicator of strategic planning but also allows us to anticipate trends.

Leads

It is pure mathematics. The companies that generate the most leads are the ones that will have the greatest sales opportunities. However, not all leads are the same. There is a big difference between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).

We could summarize that the first is a contract that we have identified as part of our target audience and that has the possibility to become a client and the second, a lead that has already made the decision to value our products or services to meet their needs.

The synergy between both is what the Leads to Close ratio will give us, the number of potential clients that we have received during a specific period of time between the actual number of clients that have closed.

Lifetime value of the Customer - Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV)

The idea of determining what the client's benefit is in all the time he spends with us seems complicated but still, there is no excuse for not knowing. It is something similar to determining how many of the users that we have in our database open our emails.

It is a very important metric to measure the ROI of the company and is a great starting point in which to start to develop future business strategies.

Cost of Acquisition - Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA)

The cost of customer acquisition is the associated cost of convincing a user that we are the best option for him. This helps us to set goals about the number of clients we need in a year and to allocate the appropriate budget for the campaign.

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Conversions Traffic to Leads

This is simple. Of all the visits to your website. How many become leads? This metric measures two very interesting things:

• The quality of the traffic
• The conversion rate

What is really interesting here is to see the vanishing points of the conversion funnel, because many times we focus on capturing traffic when in reality we need to improve a checkout process.

Relationship between leads

Leads that can be converted into Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

Of all the leads generated, how many would you put the condition of MQL? The answer will help us to attend to the quality of the leads we are generating. If you have a low proportion, you should look at the quality of your website's traffic.

MQLs to SQL

Same dynamic as the previous one. Of all the MQLs, how many could we place in SQL? This is a metric in cooperation between marketing and sales, or what we also know as S-Marketing. If good communication and understanding between teams will be a high coefficient

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SQL in sales

A direct reflection of the ability of the sales team to move potential customers to the last stage of the purchase cycle. Why some do it and others do not? It can be due to different factors such as the timeline analyzed, budget, competition, personalization, etc.

Traffic

We analyze the users who visit our website because they are the ones who could become leads.

Getting to know the traffic of our website, who they are, where they come from and what they did will allow us to determine a very important piece of information: what they expect from us.

This information helps us anticipate what users need. Basic metrics:

• Sessions
• Users
• Page views
• Pages per session
• Average duration of the session
• Bounce Rate
• Engagement in social networks

The social network strategy is part of the important efforts we have to make in Inbound Marketing since it allows us to distribute our content and interact with current users and potential customers.

We measure impressions, clicks and reactions. The best time to publish? The one where you have something interesting to say.

And remember that two identical businesses do not have to be on the same social network. It will depend on your objectives.

Read:- How to increase the traffic of the online shop

Email marketing results

In addition to social networks, the strategy in email marketing is, in essence, our lifeline with the user. As such, each campaign has to be analyzed in a multifaceted way, according to the objectives of the Inbound campaign. However, some examples of metrics to measure here are rates of openings, clicks, lows and of course, conversions.

Inbound links

The linkbuilding has to be the cornerstone of every SEO strategy. When someone links our site it means that we are creating familiarity. And the more people who link us, in theory, the more authority we will have, the better our search rankings will be and the more traffic we will receive. Is important to have a great link management tool in order to analyze and improve.

Conversions by Landing Page

If the landing page attracts the right users, we need to know which are the best converts by measuring clicks on the CTA, depth of scroll, and obviously, leads.

Blog visits

Knowing how blog entries are working is a good way to measure what users like to read. This, as a result, is our brand value, allowing us to create even more content related to a segment that works best.

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Conclusion

However, if you want to start at some point, do so by having clear your objectives, specific to each Inbound Marketing activity that you do, and then find the appropriate metrics to tell the story.

Has the targeting strategy worked better? Have we improved the engagement with the new approach of the blog? Is our lead time nurturing the right one to produce more sales? Remember that these questions are not about the data but about the impact of them.

Author BIO
Walter Ponce is the author of the internet marketing blogWalterPonce.com, where he shares proven strategies, tactics and tools to help you build a business that you love and live the life of your dreams. If you’re working on transforming an idea or a passion into an online business, and you want to start making money online, visit the section about Affiliate and Make Money Online.