Is Your Digital Marketing Strategy Effective?

Maybe you have a digital marketing strategy in place already, or you’re just starting to consider setting a strategy… but you’ve got a big question: if you invest in digital marketing, how will you know what’s working?!?

Well, take a deep breath. I’ve got you. 

An effective digital marketing strategy is guided by clear goals and defined metrics tied to business outcomes (particularly revenue and lead quality!). So to measure marketing effectiveness, you need to know how to set the right goals, track key metrics, and analyze performance at each stage of the customer journey.

Let’s dive into that…

Start with Clear Goals: What Are You Measuring?

How are you going to know if your digital marketing is working if you don’t know what “working” looks like? Without defined objectives, it’s impossible to measure success or make informed adjustments. So the first step is always setting your goals and reports.

Goal-setting will look different for each business. But you want to tie your digital marketing strategy to tangible business results (if this is revenue, or sign-ups, or traffic – whatever!).

Your goals can and will change over the long term. You should align goals and tracking metrics with the marketing funnel stage that is most important at that time:

• Awareness: Are people discovering your brand?
• Consideration: Are they comparing your offerings?
• Decision: Are they choosing you?

Let’s talk about some ways to evaluate digital marketing strategy in each of these stages. 

Awareness Stage: Are You Being Found?

The awareness stage is the initial phase of the marketing funnel where potential customers are introduced to a brand. In this stage, individuals recognize a problem or need but are unaware of solutions. The main objective is to increase brand visibility.

Metrics to Monitor:

• Impressions (across marketing tactics – like pay per click ads, social, organic)
• Website sessions and new users
• Search engine index and crawl rates
• Branded search growth

Tools to Use: 

• Google Analytics
• Search Console 
• Social platform insights

Why it matters: If customers don’t know you exist, they can’t consider or buy from you.

Consideration Stage: Are You Engaging Visitors?

During the consideration stage of the marketing funnel, potential customers who know their problem and your brand research solutions. The focus is to highlight your product or service’s value and differentiation from competitors to drive selection.

There are two important aspects within the Consideration stage to focus on:

1. Is your website experience helping or hurting you?
2. Are you receiving relevant website traffic?

Metrics to Monitor:

• Load speeds (especially mobile)
• User experience
• Click-through rates (CTR) by campaign or landing page
• Engagement rate (time on page, bounce rate)

Tools to Use: 

• Google Search Console 
• Technical SEO Audit
• User experience monitoring through HotJar

Why it matters: An amazing product offer or beautiful website design means nothing if the site doesn’t work well or visitors are not intentionally engaging with your pages.

Decision Stage: Are You Driving Conversions That Matter?

In the Decision stage, customers are ready to buy after researching, compare providers, seek validation, and make a final selection. You want them to choose you!

Metrics to Monitor:

• Number of conversions (form fills, phone calls, chats)

• Cost per conversion (and its ROI)
• Conversion rate by page or channel

Tools to Use: 

• Google Analytics 
• Tactic or ad dashboards

Why it matters: If your Sales team isn’t thrilled with the website leads, you may have some digital marketing strategy issues to uncover. While conversion rates vary a lot by industry, not knowing how to measure lead quality is a problem. To assess lead quality, consider using lead scoring, a feature offered by HubSpot.

Final Thoughts: Adjust, Optimize, Repeat

Marketing isn’t set-it-and-forget-it. Your digital marketing strategy has the best chance of success if you use these reporting metrics to guide ongoing testing and optimization.

If you’re focused on what matters and using the right tools to analyze, you should feel confident in knowing if your digital marketing strategy is effective. And if it’s not – hey, there’s still time to pivot! (yes, please insert Ross meme here).

After you’ve read (or skimmed) all this and you still don’t know if your strategy is working, get it touch with our team. We’re happy to help you evaluate your current website and campaign data and provide recommendations to optimize your digital strategy.