Updated: Oct 28, 2022
In the marketing of any kind, whether its digital form or more traditional, it is of the utmost importance to maintain and track your specific metrics. This is because tracking your metrics allows you to understand and decide your current standings, what your goal or target is, and if your current marketing strategy is working. With this information in hand, it allows you to adjust your marketing strategy if needed, it allows you to set reasonable SMART targets, and gives you the information you need to market effectively.
What are SMART Targets?
SMART targets are a goal that people often set for their business to achieve, SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The idea is that you set a goal that is within the parameters of these criteria, so by tracking your metrics and keeping up to date on your data you have all the information you need to devise targets and goals. By tracking your metrics, you have all the data to set goals specifically, because you know where you currently stand and what you should set your target as. Your metrics also allow you to make the target achievable because you can review your past numbers and metrics and that can lead you to decide on a target that is achievable and realistic. Additionally, the fact that you have metrics and are actively tracking them makes the goal of being measurable very easy because your metrics are measurable and you can see clearly if you hit your target, fell short, or overperformed and you can adjust your next SMART target accordingly. Tracking your metrics can also ensure that your targets are relevant to your company’s priority as you can analyse your metrics to decide which metric or what combination has the most correlation to your overarching goal. They also allow you to set a realistic time period for your SMART target because you can see your previous growth or statistics and how in what time period it was done, so you are more well informed to set a deadline that is realistic and achievable.
Now that you can see that just one of the benefits to tracking your metrics is being able to set SMART targets and make sure that they ascertain the criteria of SMART and in turn give your business or client some realistic and beneficial targets with all of the due diligence performed. For more information on how to use SMART Targets, click here.
Is Tracking Metrics Important?
Yes, there is a multitude of reasons why tracking your metrics is essential to any form of marketing, one example is the fact that you need to see what the work you have been carrying out is doing, whether it is negatively impacting, or the growth has been impressive? The only way to determine this is through tracking your metrics because you can see the gains and losses in many mediums and decide if your current work is beneficial, pointless, or even harmful. “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed” Dan Zarrella pointed out that marketing without tracking your metrics and data is nearly impossible because you cannot see where you are, where you have been, and where you are going.
Data being important is quite evident, but there are ways to make the most of your data and metrics and you can compile quite effective spreadsheets with your data, giving you a lot of insight. You can learn to recognise certain trends and other behaviours and you can start to understand the early signs that your marketing is working or not working. Along with this understanding comes the ability to identify who is visiting your website, where they come from, and how long they are staying on each page, through this you can surmise the exact reasoning that you saw a steep increase or decrease in page views and click through rates.
Should you Track Social Media Metrics?
If you are running ads on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other major ad networks such as Bing ads and Google Adwords, then you need to track their performances accurately. The only way to do this is by tracking your data, there is no point in running ads if you have no idea which are successful and which are a waste of money. Furthermore, bringing all of these elements together, and tracking your metrics allows you to create a customer-centric product where tracking your marketing campaign allows you to understand exactly what your target customer expects from your product/services and see what works. This is paramount because you can easily spend a heavy amount on your marketing promotion, but it will be nigh on impossible to sustain your business with a poor product or service. This is why understanding and tracking your metrics lets you understand who is interested in your product and from there you can do competitor research to see what works for other people in your niche and combine all this information to streamline your product or service into the best product it can be, all from tracking data and metrics.
Related to this article is the Remarketing article
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