What Marketing Analytics Should I Track in my Small Business?

How to Measure Marketing Success: Marketing Analytics Every Small Business Should Track

Hey there, small business owners! So you’ve been putting in the hours, crafting your marketing campaigns, and getting your brand out there. But how do you know if all that hard work is actually paying off? Measuring your marketing success is key to understanding what’s working, what needs tweaking, and where to invest your precious time and resources. Let’s dig into the essential marketing analytics that every small business should track to ensure you’re on the path to success.

Why Measuring Marketing Analytics Matters

Before diving into the specifics, let’s chat about why measuring marketing success is so important:

1. Identify What Works: See which campaigns are driving results and focus on those strategies.
2. Optimize Your Strategy: Use data to make informed decisions and continuously improve your marketing efforts.
3. Allocate Resources Wisely: Invest your time and budget in activities that generate the highest return.
4. Prove ROI: Demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts to stakeholders (even if that’s literally just you 😉 ).
5. Adapt Quickly: Spot trends and shifts in audience behavior to stay ahead of the curve.

Now, let’s break down the key metrics you should be tracking to measure your marketing success effectively.

1. Website Traffic

What to Track:

• Total Visits: The overall number of visits to your website.
• Unique Visitors: The number of individual users visiting your site.
• Page Views: The total number of pages viewed by visitors.
• Session Duration: The average amount of time visitors spend on your site.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page.
• Customer Journey: What pages did they end up on before they took action?

Why It Matters:

Website traffic is a primary indicator of your marketing reach. Analyzing these metrics helps you understand how well your campaigns are driving awareness and attracting visitors. A healthy balance between total visits and unique visitors, coupled with a low bounce rate and high session duration, usually indicates effective engagement.

Tools to Use:

• Google Analytics: Comprehensive insights into your website traffic and user behavior.

2. Traffic Sources

What to Track:

• Organic Search: Traffic from search engines.
• Direct Traffic: Visitors who type your URL directly into their browser.
• Referral Traffic: Traffic from other websites linking to yours.
• Social Media: Visitors from social media platforms.
• Paid Search: Traffic from paid advertisements (e.g., Google Ads).

Why It Matters:

Knowing where your traffic is coming from helps you identify which channels are most effective in driving visitors to your site. This allows you to focus your efforts and budget on the channels that yield the best results.

Tools to Use:

• Google Analytics: Traffic source breakdown and insights.
• UTM Parameters: Track specific campaigns and sources in detail.
• Hyros: Similar to Google Analytics but with more tracking capabilities. It’s expensive but can be worth it if you are running multiple campaigns simultaneously

3. Conversion Rate

What to Track:

• Overall Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action (e.g., make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter).
• Channel-Specific Conversion Rates: Conversion rates segmented by traffic source.

Why It Matters:

Your conversion rate is a direct measure of how effectively your website turns visitors into customers or leads. By understanding your conversion rate, you can identify bottlenecks in your sales funnel and make necessary adjustments to improve performance.

Tools to Use:

• Google Analytics: Conversion tracking and goal setting.
• CRM Systems: Track lead conversions and sales inside your CRM for ease of reporting. You can use tags or lists to measure as well.
• Meta Reports: If you’re running Facebook/Instagram ads exclusively. Meta already has the reporting for you inside of your ads manager.
• Hyros: Similar to Google Analytics but with more tracking capabilities. It’s expensive but can be worth it if you are running multiple campaigns simultaneously

4. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

What to Track:

• Total Marketing Spend: The total amount spent on marketing efforts.
• Number of New Customers Acquired: The total number of new customers gained during a specific period.

Why It Matters:

CAC helps you understand how much you’re spending to acquire a new customer. Keeping this cost in check is crucial for maintaining profitability. By comparing CAC with customer lifetime value (CLV), you can assess the overall effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Tools to Use:

• Budget Tracking Tools: Monitor your marketing spend from Meta, Google and more.
• CRM Systems: Track new customer acquisitions with tags and sales stages.

5. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) (one of the most commonly overlooked marketing analytics)

What to Track:

• Average Purchase Value: The average amount a customer spends per purchase.
• Purchase Frequency: How often customers make purchases.
• Customer Lifespan: The average duration a customer remains active.

Why It Matters:

CLV helps you understand the total value a customer brings to your business over their lifetime. Believe it or not, it’s wayyy cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one. Once you start tracking your CAC you’ll see what I mean. So by increasing CLV, you can improve overall profitability and justify higher marketing spend to acquire valuable customers.

Tools to Use:

• CRM Systems: Track customer purchase behavior and value.
• Analytics Tools: Calculate and monitor CLV metrics.

6. Return on Investment (ROI)

What to Track:

• Revenue Generated from Marketing Efforts: Total revenue attributable to marketing campaigns.
• Total Marketing Spend: The total amount spent on marketing efforts.

Why It Matters:

ROI measures the effectiveness of your marketing investments. A positive ROI indicates that your marketing efforts are generating more revenue than they cost, which is the ultimate goal. Tracking ROI helps you justify marketing spend and allocate resources to the most profitable campaigns. And really kill the ones that are just a money suck. Remember every industry and business is different. What works for one small business may not work for yours.

Tools to Use:

• Financial Tracking Tools: Monitor revenue and expenses.
• Google Analytics: Attribution models to understand revenue contribution.

7. Social Media Engagement

What to Track:

• Likes, Shares, Comments: Engagement metrics on social media posts.
• Follower Growth: Increase in social media followers over time.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click on links in your social media posts.

Why It Matters:

Social media engagement metrics help you understand how well your content resonates with your audience. High engagement indicates that your posts are interesting and valuable to your followers, which can drive traffic and conversions. But DON’T fall for vanity metrics. Sometimes your content is engaging but for all the wrong reasons, which never leads to sales. Sure that inspirational quote got 100 likes and tons of comments but did it bring in REVENUE? That’s what you really want to focus on in your social media.

Tools to Use:

• Social Media Analytics Tools: Built-in analytics on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
• Third-Party Tools: Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer and Sprout Social for more detailed insights.

8. Email Marketing Performance

What to Track:

• Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open your email.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who click on links in your email.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of email recipients who take a desired action.
• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Why It Matters:

Email marketing analytics help you assess the effectiveness of your email campaigns. High open and click-through rates indicate that your emails are relevant and engaging, while high conversion rates show that your emails are driving desired actions.

Tools to Use:

• Email Marketing Platforms: Tools like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and ActiveCampaign for tracking email performance.

9. Customer Feedback and Satisfaction

What to Track:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): A measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty. And of course how likely they are to recommend you to a friend.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): A direct measure of customer satisfaction.
• Customer Reviews and Testimonials: Feedback from customers about their experience with your business. By the way this one is the most important, because online reviews increase your SEO and social proof that your company is legit!

Why It Matters:

Customer feedback and satisfaction metrics provide insights into how customers perceive your brand and products. Positive feedback indicates that you’re meeting customer expectations, while negative feedback highlights areas for improvement. And don’t worry if you get a negative review, respond like the professional person you are and try to rectify the issue. You never know you may turn a bad situation into a raving fan!

Tools to Use:

• Survey Tools: Platforms like SurveyMonkey and Typeform for collecting customer feedback.
• Review Platforms: Monitor reviews on sites like your Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Trustpilot.

Ready to track your marketing analytics?

Measuring marketing success is not a one-time task but an ongoing process that requires consistent monitoring and analysis. By tracking these key metrics, you can gain valuable insights into your marketing performance, make data-driven decisions, and continuously optimize your strategies to achieve better results. Remember, the goal is to understand what’s working, improve what’s not, and ultimately drive growth for your small business. Happy tracking!

We’re here to help! If you are having trouble tracking your results we can help you fill the gaps. Schedule a free discovery call with us today to get started.