Seven Key Metrics To Measure The Success Of Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

To succeed in marketing and grow your business, you must be able to measure your ROI. The metrics you track to gauge the success of any inbound marketing campaign your Organisation runs are crucially important. Without measurable objectives, you'll find estimating the ROI of your efforts difficult. You also need to know what results you’re looking for. Here are some important metrics to use to weigh up the success of your inbound marketing strategy.

1. Your total reach

Reach is defined as the total size of the audience your inbound marketing connects with, including Twitter followers, Facebook fans, LinkedIn followers, blog subscribers and email lists. For your marketing campaign to be a success, you need to have reached and connected with your client prospects and your existing customers. This exposure is important because it helps raise your brand awareness and is the first step to engaging with your audience and establishing your organisation as a thought leader in the education marketplace.

2. The level of organic traffic

Organic traffic refers to whether people are finding your website by means other than paid promotion or email. A high level of organic traffic shows that your prospects are seeing your content and are engaging with it by arriving on your website without going through any of the search, social media or other marketing channels.

3. Click-through rates and website visits

If someone is interested in your content, they’ll click on the link you provide for them to find out more information. Inbound marketing channels like Facebook and Google will allow you to track these clicks and you can use them as an indication of the success of your content and your inbound marketing campaign. If you have a high click-through rate but are experiencing low conversions, you may need to look at your target audience as you could be targeting too broad a group.

4. The bounce rate of your website

By monitoring your website’s bounce rate you can determine whether a certain channel or campaign is a success or not. If you have a high bounce rate, you might need to relook your content as it could be an indication that your users were expecting something different when they clicked on the link.

5. Lead conversion rate 

A core metric you can use to judge the success of your inbound marketing campaign is the percentage of web visitors that turn into actual leads. If you find your conversion rate falling below industry standard, it can indicate a problem with your message or your content. Also monitor what sources are driving the most traffic and what content drives the most leads. Measuring this requires the ability to create landing pages and tracking codes for each of your assets this is a feature you’ll find provided by most marketing automation solutions.

6. Your content engagement

You can easily tell if your audience loves your content by the comments they leave on your social platforms and how often your content is shared. Facebook provides reports on engaged users showing the total number of posts to your page wall, likes, comments, shares on your posts and answers to questions. The more your content is liked and shared, the higher its exposure and it won’t cost you a cent. In addition, if your content is shared and liked numerous times, its authority increases and so too does your standing as an expert industry thought leader.

7. Your conversion rate

How long is it taking you to convert your leads? By monitoring this, you can see if you are spending too long nurturing your leads and unnecessarily extending your sales cycle. You can also establish the moment your leads become your customers.

Lupo Digital is an inbound marketing agency that specialises in running and measuring successful inbound marketing campaigns that are appropriate to every prospect stage in the buyers journey cycle. For more information about which digital marketing channels work for your organisation, download our executive guide to inbound marketing.