4 Ways to Track and Determine Your Digital Marketing ROI

I have spoken to hundreds, if not thousands of business owners about the value of search engine optimization and digital marketing over my 20+ year career as a digital marketing strategist. I find often that many business owners do not know their digital marketing roi, or how to determine it. Some business owners are not even sure if digital marketing is a great investment. This blog post is going to briefly delve into four ways to track the return on investment of your digital marketing so you will know how your marketing dollars are performing.

This blog post is going to delve into four ways to track your return on investment in your digital marketing, but first:

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is the method of getting an organic listing on Google page 1. You get this placement by making sure that your website is in compliance with Google’s Search Algorithm.  If you google THE SEO QUEEN you will find that my website is on Google Page 1. You will also see that it has highlighted links as well.

Also  take a look at another client, Quesurance. Do you see that they are also on Google Page 1, and have the highlighted links as well?

 

Take a moment to google your company’s name. Are you appearing in results?

 

It is important for your website to be ranked number 1 for your brand name and non-branded or generic keyword terms that are germane to your products and services so that you can be found by your best prospects.  When you are working on your website’s visibility it is important to use the following four strategies to make sure that you know what is working, track your return on investment, and gather data so that you can tweak your marketing efforts.

 

Strategy Number 1: Google Analytics 

 

Google Analytics Solutions is a marketing analytics platform that will help you to better understand your customers, prospects, and website visitors. When you install Google Analytics the data gathered from visitors to your website will reveal how long website visitors stay on your website, what pages site visitors view, what region of the world that they are coming from, what computers or mobile device that they are using to view your content, and when they make a purchase or complete a lead capture form. This is helpful for when you want to optimize your website’s conversions and visibility.

 

Strategy Number 2: Google Webmaster Tools:

 

Google Webmaster Tools is another great solution provided by Google. I like to think of it as a direct line to Google. You can connect your Google Analytics to your Google Webmaster Tools account so you can track how often your website appears in Google Search Results, Google Page 1, how many pages are indexed by Google, what keywords your website is organically ranked for, and your conversion rate from the search engine results page to actually clicking on your website. You can also submit your sitemap.xml via Google Webmaster tools, and track how many pages are indexing as well.

Here you can see a snapshot of my Search Analytics summary:

Total Clicks is how many times the search result was clicked on in a month, Total Impressions is how many times my website appeared in a search query results. The Average CTR is the Average click through rate from the search engine results page to my website. Average position is simply where on average my website, theseoqueen.net appears in search engine results. As you can see the website’s average position has improved over 10 positions month over month.  This data definitely shows me that my visibility is increasing with more digital marketing of my own website.

 

Strategy Number 3: Campaign URL Builder :

 

The Campaign URL Builder uses UTM Parameters, and it is another helpful solution from Google. This tool allows you to track custom marketing campaigns via parameters in a URL.

Here is an example of an url: https://www.theseoqueen.net/contact-seo-queen/#utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Blog

The data from this URL will load directly into the google analytics account for www.theseoqueen.net. This will allow you to view the data so that you know which of your marketing tactics are yielding the best customers. This URL has the parameter for Email and Blog, so I know when I see this data in my Google Analytics that people clicked on this link as a result of the email I sent out that contains a link to my blog.

 

Strategy Number 4: CRM

 

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management System. This allows you to track your customer from initial interest to when the deal closes. I think that using a CRM is extremely important and it is the tool that I have used to manage my sales pipeline from $0 to $500,000+ over the years.  This is a great way to keep score for all of your various marketing tactics, and your marketing efforts in general.  Here is a link a to a free CRM: https://hubspot.com/crm.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, you can use marketing analytics to understand how frequently your website is being found, how often your ideal prospect is clicking through to your website, where your customer is searching from, what device that they are using, and how often people click on your various campaign links, and finally the CRM or customer relationship management tool will help you to keep your pipeline organized. I think one of the missed opportunities in business is a lack of follow-up. I have followed up with prospects for years and finally closed the sale. Remember, no just means ‘not right now’. Whenever you get a lead, it is important to track that in your CRM. Marketing is NOT sales.  You know your marketing is working when you are generating leads. I think it is important to remember that your marketing is working if you have people considering your products and services. The marketing and sales process has conversion rates at every step, and it takes time, practice, and experiments to perfect each company’s marketing and sales tactics.  If you want your share of the 1.2 Trillion Searches that are happening on Google annually you can download 40 steps to google page 1 by  downloading this helpful resource.