Numbers, Numbers everywhere! With every social network we sign up for, and every online service we subscribe to, we’re given numbers measuring everything from followers to likes to page views. It’s so easy to get caught up in all these numbers and to start to try to make them bigger and better. Bigger is better, right? While internet marketing does provide fairly easy measurement tactics, it’s vital to focus on the numbers that are important to your business and its goals.
Tie Measurements to Goals
Numbers that aren’t directly tied to goals are nice, but may obscure focus from what’s really important. Look for measurements that will allow you to directly understand how you’re doing on your way to your goals. Secondary measurements that help you understand what tactics are working, and how are also important. These measurements, primary and secondary key performance indicators, are what you should focus on improving.
Measure with Value
Measurements need to help you understand how your business is doing. Look for measurements tied to your goals that provide value in understanding how you’re doing — how each tactic is working and how it can be improved. Valuable measurements tend to also be easy to understand, but there are measurement tactics that do need more analysis to be valuable. The key is to do whatever number crunching or analysis needs to be done to make a measurement valuable — otherwise it’s just a number.
Measure to Drive Action
Measurement without action is useless. Measurements need to be analyzed to provide insights that can be acted upon. A good metrics will help you understand how your tactics are doing and what you should improve. It may take analysis to get to the point of actionable insights, but if a number doesn’t provide any insights, it’s not the right number.
Continuous Measurement for Improvement
Just like marketing and sales, measurement is something that has to be done constantly to be valuable to the business. If you just look at some numbers every quarter, it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is helping you achieve your goals. While it’s not necessary for most companies to measure daily, regularly measure and analyze to provide recommended actions for your business to take to improve performance.
How do you measure success for your internet marketing?
