they spent on each page and what they
clicked on.
▪ Conversion.^ Tracks when a user does
something that you want them to do, i.e.
buy a product, submit an enquiry, etc.
This needs to be specifically set up by
using a piece of code on your website.
The tool allows you to create your own
custom dashboard, so you can just adjust
the time period when you log in and
immediately see the data that you want
to measure. There are also other software
applications available for you to collate
this information into easily digestible and
visual reports – check out Swydo and
Supermetrics.
SOCIAL MEDIA
One of the biggest appeals of social media
is the fact that you can track customers
and customer relationships in a meaningful
way. However, many business owners get
bogged down with the idea of tracking
vanity metrics, such as the number of
Facebook fans and Twitter followers. While
these are nice-to-haves and definitely
necessary to gain reach, they shouldn't be
the only things to look at to see if you are
succeeding on these platforms.
Across all platforms, the metrics that
matter are the reach of your content
(sometimes called impressions), the
engagement that it receives and the
number of clicks through to your website
(click through rate). While the metrics are
similar for most platforms, there are some
that are worth noting:
▪ Facebook. The interesting thing about
this platform is the amount of personal
information it can gather about your
audience. Facebook is the number one
social media tool for consumer marketing
due to the fact that the targeting of
content and advertising is so detailed.
The metrics that are available on your
page include the age, gender, location and
interests of your audience.
▪ Twitter.^ The use of hashtags is the
main differentiating factor of Twitter
analytics. From the platform's analytics
dashboard you can find out what the
most talked about topics are such as
events like International Women's Day
and big sports events. You can then join
the conversation by creating a campaign
focusing on one of these topics.
▪ Instagram. The native dashboard of
metrics for Instagram is fairly simple as it
is done purely on your phone, however
there are plenty of tools available to
delve deeper into your statistics such
as Hootsuite and Sprout Social. These
tools allow you to track your hashtag
performance, how many people engaged
with the hashtags in your posts and which
ones performed the best. Owlmetrics is
another useful tool and offers access to
rich analytics that you can use to improve
performance.▪ LinkedIn.^ As one of the only business-
to-business social networks available,
the metrics here are a little different. The
LinkedIn analytics dashboard shows the
demographics of your page by industry
and seniority of role allowing you to see
who your customer really is and targeting
your content accordingly.Another important way to measure social
media results is to test the content on
different audiences. Conducting split
testing or A/B testing with your content
can be hugely beneficial to finding out
what works and what doesn't. Remember
to test only one metric at a time and to
give it time to achieve results.EMAIL MARKETING
Newsletters, when done well, are still a
very effective way of reaching customers
directly and are extremely measurable.
Using platforms such as Mailchimp,Constant Contact or Campaign Monitor
you can track your subscription rate,
number of opens on a certain email
campaign, number of clicks and where
the user clicked on the newsletter as well
as the number of users who unsubscribe
after each campaign.The important step, and one that
business owners often forget, is to
study the data to change behaviour and
get better results in future. A study by
the SMB Group found that the biggest
technological challenge facing small
businesses is getting better insights using
the data they already have access to.Once you have a better understanding of
the metrics and how to find this data it is
important to document the information
in a format which can be compared over
different date periods.Each platform should have objectives
and goals in place to gauge whether the
platform is bringing in a good return on
investment. The goals should be realistic
and aligned with your business goals.What Is A/B Testing?
A/B testing (also known as split testing or
bucket testing) is a method of comparing two
versions of a webpage or app against each
other to determine which one performs better.
AB testing is essentially an experiment where
two or more variants of a page are shown to
users at random, and statistical analysis is
used to determine which variation performs
better for a given conversion goal.
Source: http://www.optimizely.co.zaProblem solver and people manager,
Dominique Sandwith is the co-founder
of Yellow Door Collective, a Cape Town
based full-service digital marketing
agency offering strategy, content
creation, website design and graphic
design. Visit: http://www.yellowdoorcollective.
co.za to find out more.