By Lisa Kember

What do running fanatics, body-builders and hotdog-eating champions have in common? They will all tell you that you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

The same applies when it comes to your digital marketing.

Guesswork: a pretty lousy marketing model

Digital marketing is playing a bigger and bigger role in most businesses. Everything you do as a business or organization online has the potential to bring your target audience closer to your brand. But how do you know if the way you are marketing yourself online is having the desired effect?

That’s where analytics come in.

Analytics give you insight into how much engagement you are getting from your online activities — such as what people are reading on your website, where they are clicking and what they are doing afterwards. Without analytics you are just guessing. And guessing isn’t a very good marketing model.

 Too much information = mega frustration. There’s a way around that.

Got your rain boots handy? Some analytics packages track the way people engage with your emails, website and social media before almost drowning you with data. That leaves you wading through a murky swamp of acquisitions, post reaches and lead-close ratios. Hmm, no thanks.

The trick is to monitor the metrics that matter.

So how do you know what matters?

The main consideration is to tie metrics to business goals. What are you trying to accomplish? That will tell you what you should be measuring.

Then you need to figure out how to start tracking metrics and how to develop a digital marketing measurement framework that will put you miles ahead of your competitors. You need to know the best metrics for analyzing web, email and social media performance.

Different metrics are suited to different things. So you need to look at what makes sense for the type of activities you are doing. You won’t want to be measuring offline sales with an analytics tool designed to measure website traffic.

Make some noise, tweak as you go

The more you can put the word out about your business or products, the more you will get attention. That’s the best way to impact positively on the results you are aiming for. And your analytics tools will help you get there.

If you are serious about converting leads and driving real results with content marketing, you should be prepared for constant testing, tweaking and fine-tuning. Study trends in your analytics to gain insight on how people engage with you online. What pages are people exiting from? What links are getting the most heat in your emails? Find the sticking points and rework.

As you track your results and do more of the things that your tracking tools are indicating success at, the more results you will get.

And in the end, you can bag yourself the big prize – the direct impact on your bottom line.

Lisa Kember is the Regional Director for Constant Contact in Eastern Canada. She can be reached at [email protected]