Top 10 Modern Marketing Metrics that Every Marketer Should Know

Hello there.

Since you’re here, you’re most likely part of a modern marketing team, which means you know your leads and are working towards converting them.

But wait, how well are you tracking your progress?

Seeing your ad out there is a good start; getting a positive response is encouraging; getting customers to buy your product or service, though, is a race towards the finish line. In the midst of the intangible, you need something measurable to show, and that is where the modern marketing metrics come in.

Numbers speak loudly.

Modern Marketing Metrics are great tools to assess how your marketing campaigns are doing in terms of sales conversion and brand awareness.

Branding is the distinct feeling and experience you create for your customers – like the emotions that McDonald’s yellow arches invoke, or the sense of reliability that comes with the Apple logo.

While branding is the essence of who you’re, it’s marketing that builds brand awareness and brings in the money.

And what better way to track them than use digital metrics?

What are marketing metrics?

Modern Marketing metrics are quantifiable values used to illustrate the marketing strategies’ efficiency across all channels. You might want to monitor how well your digital marketing strategies are doing, whether your SEO is progressing, or if you’re growing on social media. All of these can be measured with the right marketing metrics.

Your marketing team is likely working across multiple channels. From your website, chats, and social media handles to one-on-one emails, you name it, and they have it covered.

However, with such a wide range of platforms being used, it is essential for marketing teams to track success and performance in real-time continually. This can be done with the key marketing metrics

But remember when picking the most suitable marketing metrics for your business, you need to be aware of which channel you’re using and who’ll make the decisions with the data.

Managers might want to dig into the metrics’ nitty-gritty metrics of each channel for a better understanding of day-to-day performance. In comparison, senior leaders might wish for a fortnightly 360-degree view of digital marketing effectiveness.

Top 10 Modern Marketing Metrics

Here is the list of key modern marketing metrics that every marketing team should track:

• Inbound marketing Return on Investment (ROI)
• Cost per lead
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• SEO Traffic
• Traffic to lead ratio
• Lead to Customer Ratio
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Landing Page Conversion Rates
• Social traffic and conversion
• Traffic by device

1. Inbound marketing Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI is one of the most critical metrics that marketing managers should track. It shows how the time, resources, and money of business are being used.

Calculating your inbound ROI return helps measure your monthly and annual performance. Depending on this, your strategy can be planned and tweaked for the following months or even a year.

This metric breaks marketing ROI into campaigns and shows what works and what doesn’t.

So, whatever marketing strategy your business is using, the return on investment will decide its future.

A simple formula to calculate inbound marketing ROI: (Sales Growth – Marketing Costs)/ Marketing Costs = Marketing ROI. Say, for instance, your business’s sales grew by $1,000, and your marketing campaign cost $200, then the simple ROI is 400%.

However, this formula assumes that all sales growth is related to marketing strategies. For a more accurate view of marketing impact and ROI, marketers should account for organic sales.

(Sales Growth-Organic Sales Growth-Marketing Cost)/Marketing Cost = Marketing ROI

When using marketing ROI formulas, it is essential to consider the overall ROI marketing strategies. The definitions of “return” can differ depending on the marketing team’s strategy, campaign efforts, and the general overhead for the campaign.

2. Cost per lead

You need to measure customer acquisition costs for both inbound and outbound marketing. But how much does it cost to acquire a customer?

Measuring your customer acquisition costs includes the integration of your marketing automation and CRM systems, as well as the accounting of all costs associated with ERP integration.

Customer acquisition costs for inbound marketing include

• Manpower (Creative and Technological)
• Technologies and Software
• Overhead Costs

Customer acquisition costs for outbound marketing include:

• Advertisements
• Marketing Distribution
• Manpower (Marketing and Sales)
• Overhead Costs

Once you have measured the costs involved in your inbound and outbound marketing campaigns, you can account for new sales and assign separate budgets for each campaign.

If your business mainly uses inbound marketing, you can break it down into various strategies and assess how well each strategy is doing. With that knowledge, improving your strategy becomes a breeze.

3. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The CLV is the amount of money that customers are expected to spend on your business during their lifetime. This is an important metric, as it helps you decide which segment of your customers warrant more marketing investment. The customer acquisition cost is one of the metrics to consider in CLV.

A simple formula to calculate customer lifetime value: (Average sales per customer) x (Average number of times a customer purchases every year) x (Average retention time customers {months or years})

Using this formula, a marathon runner who buys trainers from your shoe store could be worth:

$100 a pair of shoes X 4 pairs a year X 8 years = $100x4x8 = $3,200

And the mother of a child who buys shows could be worth:

$20 per pair X 5 pair per year X 3 years = $20x5x3 = $300

So who should your target customer be? In this case, it would be the adult runners in your database.

4. SEO traffic

SEO is an ongoing process, and you need to track it in real-time to stay ahead of the SEO curve.

Now comes the question of paid vs organic traffic. Which will work better for your business?

Google Analytics will help your business understand the performance of the landing page and optimize it appropriately.

While this SEO metric might not show quick results, it is important to track it because it offers performance over time. This includes sessions, engaged visitors, conversion rates, bounce rate, time spent, etc. These components can be continually tweaked and improved.

5. Traffic to lead ratio

The traffic lead ratio offers details about the number of website users that ultimately turn into leads. These metrics helps you determine the quality of your website traffic and whether you should change your strategy.

It is essential to understand your website traffic, particularly to know where it comes from, whether it’s organic, direct, social media, or referrals.

Once you understand how your customers reach your website, it’s important to capture legitimate leads.

Let’s say that your website has 1,000 website visitors and 100 new leads every month. This means that the traffic to lead ratio of the website is 10:1. In simple terms, the conversion rate is 10%.

6. Lead to Customer Ratio

Your marketing campaign is on point, and you’re getting the leads you have envisioned. Now comes the next step, calculating the number of leads your sales team can close. You should measure both the qualified lead conversion rate for sales, as well as the accepted lead conversion rate.

Here is an example to understand the difference between the two:

Qualified leads

Leads are deemed to be sales-ready based on their lead score or the completed activities. Most companies will consider a lead that fills out a form, such as a “contact rep,” to be a leader that is willing to purchase the service or product. E.g., leads who fill out a form for a webinar will be considered qualified leads.

Accepted leads

Leads that the sales teams consider as opportunities and have already contacted or scheduled a call.

With these two ratios in mind, you must ask yourself the following questions:

• Is my campaign attracting relevant leads?
• Is our CRM effectively passing eligible leads to sales teams at the right time?
• How high is our close rate?

If your answer to any of these questions was “no”, then don’t worry – ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day. You can still pull up your sleeves and make your marketing campaigns more effective in different marketing channels!

7. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Do your customers enjoy your products or services? And are they recommending it to their friends and family?

Marketers know that word of mouth is a great marketing tool, and NPS helps gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty and assess the growth of your business. Knowing this you can tweak your marketing strategies to create more people who will advocate for your business and drive up revenue.

8. Landing Page Conversion Rates

So, your landing page is up, and it looks fantastic. But here comes the most important question, is converting?

A landing page that does not produce leads is like a mirage in a desert; it looks promising at first, but it only leads to disappointment. So, it is imperative to monitor your conversion rate.

Similar to your traffic to lead ratio, if your landing page attracts a lot of traffic but has a low conversion rate, then it’s a warning sign that you’ll have to change some part of your marketing strategy.

For instance, try A/B testing some of the changes mentioned below and measure which ones get the highest conversion rate:

• Adjust the color of your CTA
• Add more value to your CTA
• Make written content more persuasive;
• Add social proof (i.e., testimonials, reviews, awards, etc.)

9. Social traffic and conversion

Metrics that you can use to show the importance and effect of social media on your marketing campaigns include:

• Lead conversions
• Customers conversions
• Percentage of traffic received

With social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram, you may not have the resources or bandwidth to maximize the marketing value of each one. Still, by assessing the number of leads, customers, and the percentage of traffic from each channel, you can decide where you would like to focus your marketing efforts. Calculate your sales metrics with this guide.

10. Traffic by device

As your customers spend more time on their phones, so should your marketing campaigns. Your website should be effectively optimized for mobile devices.

Here are a few parameters to pay attention to:

• Mobile traffic
• Lead conversions from mobile devices
• Bounce rates for mobile devices
• Web optimized landing page conversion rates

Understanding how the mobile website experience is for your customers will help you improve and refine it. And this will, in turn, increase mobile conversions. Let’s find out how to calculate the email marketing metrics.

Final thoughts

When you monitor these ten modern marketing metrics, it is easier to craft a seamless marketing journey that ensures engagement and conversion.

The success of your marketing journey is based on data, and you have it all. Yet, it could be challenging to monitor all these metrics and come up with comprehensive data charts.

This is where CRM software could assist you, by pulling the above-mentioned data from multiple platforms and presenting them in a single dashboard, you have an overall view of how your marketing strategy is doing.

With all the modern marketing metrics in one place, it is now straightforward for your marketing teams to track, accelerate, optimize, and improve marketing campaigns.