Key Digital Marketing Metrics and Channels Explained
Key Digital Marketing Channels
1. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the traffic that comes from search engines. When people search for something on Google (or Bing, or any other search engine), a list of websites shows up. This page is called a search engine results page (or SERP). When people click on one of these results, that visit is counted in the organic traffic of that website.
It is the best, most sought-after traffic by marketers. It’s the main reason why content marketing is on the rise today. The results of organic traffic are exponential.
2. Direct Traffic
Direct traffic is the traffic that comes from people directly typing or entering your website’s URL on their browsers. If someone bookmarks your page, then later goes back and opens it, that’s counted as direct traffic.
It’s usually an indication of brand awareness.
From the user’s perspective, direct traffic usually comes from bookmarks or autocomplete in the URL — which is similar to typing it directly. The only difference is that you had a little help from your browser.
Example: Jon realizes that Christmas is around the corner. He opens up Safari and starts typing “amaz” then the browser autocompletes the URL to amazon.com. He hits enter and Amazon’s website shows up.
3. Social Traffic
Social traffic is the traffic that comes from social networks. This happens when people share a link on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and you click on it.
Quora, Reddit, and other similar sites also fall under here. But it depends on how Google categorizes the site. In short, it depends on the document referrer field and matches the value there to a list of known social networks. If it doesn’t have a match, it will fall under referral traffic.
4. Referral Traffic
Referral traffic is the traffic that comes from other websites.
If done right, this is the result of effective content marketing. What happens is other people/organizations write about you/your products/services on their own websites.
Since they have their own audience, when they click on that link, they land on your own website. Google Analytics counts that as referral traffic. The website that links to your site is called the referring website/domain.
5. Email Traffic
Email traffic is the traffic that comes from your email campaigns.
Take note that not all links in your emails go to this traffic. To make sure it appears properly under this channel grouping, you have to integrate your email marketing software with Google Analytics or manually tag (UTM parameters) your links — and make sure the medium parameter is exactly “email.”
6. Paid Traffic
Paid traffic is the traffic that comes from paid advertisements. These are ads from Google Ads or Bing Ads. To be more specific, links with the medium “ppc” or “cpc” (or the ones indicated in the table above) are the ones tracked.
You can customize this, along with other settings, in the admin settings of your Google Analytics account. You can find out more information about how to do this in my previous post about paid traffic.
7. Display Traffic
Display traffic is the traffic that comes from paid advertisements as well. Unlike Paid Traffic, this kind of traffic requires the medium parameter to be equal to “display.”
I’m sure you’ve visited sites that are showing you ads. If you click on one of those banner ads, most of the time, your visit which leads to another website will be counted as display traffic.
You’d often find ads on news or media outlets, bloggers or affiliate sites. If it involves a form of pretty graphics, those are display ads.
Refer to the table above to see which parameters direct traffic is counted in your GA account.
Essential Digital Marketing Metrics
1. MRR
Monthly Recurring Revenue, commonly abbreviated as “MRR,” is all of your recurring revenue normalized into a monthly amount. It’s a way to average your various pricing plans and billing periods into a single, consistent number that you can track the trend of over time.
How to Calculate MRR
MRR = number of customers x average billed amount
So, 10 customers paying you an average of $100 per month would mean an MRR of $1,000.
3. CLTV
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV or CLTV) is the average revenue you can generate from customers over the entire lifetime of their account. In simple terms, it is the money you would make from a customer before churning.
For example, if a customer signs up for your product for nine months, the amount he will pay during that period will determine his lifetime value.
Why is CLV Important to Know?
- It provides you with a customer-centric perspective to guide some critical marketing and sales strategies of your subscription business, such as acquisition, retention, cross-selling, upselling, and support.
- It helps you decide how much to spend on acquisition.
- It helps you understand your customer behavior better.
Formula:
ARPU * Gross Margin * Average duration of customer contracts
Applications of CLV
- Boosting Retention and Loyalty: CLV is an indicator of how satisfied customers are with your services. The more a business knows about its customers and what engages them, the better are the chances of long customer relationships. CLV helps businesses prioritize their efforts to acquire hold on to high-value customers.
- Forecasting Demand and Sales: This one’s particularly important for retail and eCommerce businesses. By being mindful of their CLV, businesses can better predict future demand and inventory. It helps in efficient resource allocation.
- Segregating Customers: CLV helps businesses identify their most valuable and most loyal high-tier customers. Businesses can use this data to redirect their resources to engage and retain these customers while also strategizing about moving the low-tier customers to the higher tier.
Google Analytics Metrics and Dimensions
What is a Metric in Google Analytics?
Metrics are expressed through numbers (number values, %, $, time) in a Google Analytics report: they are quantitative measurements of data and show how a website is performing in relation to a specific dimension.
For example, the number of ‘Users’ who came from desktop, mobile, and tablet devices and their ‘Average Session Duration’ are metrics for the Device Category dimension:
Google Analytics Dimensions and Metrics
Metrics and dimensions are the building blocks of Google Analytics that help you segment, organize, and analyze your traffic data.
What ́s the Difference Between Metrics and Dimensions?
Google Analytics reports are made of dimensions and metrics. Throughout most reports, metrics are the quantitative measurements of data and dimensions are the labels used to describe them—or, in even easier terms: metrics are always expressed by numbers (number values, %, $, time), while dimensions are expressed by non-numerical values.
What is a Dimension in Google Analytics?
Dimensions are the attributes that can be used to describe and segment, organize, and sort data.
Examples of dimensions include:
- Medium
- Browser
- Country
- Language
- Campaign
- Device Category
Each dimension accepts different values: for example, the dimension ‘Device Category’ indicates the type of device used to visit a website, accepts ‘desktop, mobile, and tablet’ as values, and can help sort traffic between the three devices.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
What is CRO?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise. The CRO process involves understanding how users move through your site, what actions they take, and what’s stopping them from completing your goals.
What is a Conversion?
A conversion is the general term for a visitor completing a site goal.
Goals come in many shapes and sizes. If you use your website to sell products, the primary goal (known as the macro-conversion) is for the user to make a purchase. There are smaller conversions.
Google Shopping
What is Google Shopping?
Google Shopping is a Google service that allows consumers to search for, compare, and shop for physical products across different retailers who have paid to advertise their products. This is also known as a Comparison Shopping Engine (CSE). Google Shopping results show up as thumbnail images that display each product’s retailer and price.
Google Shopping is in the middle of SEM and Display
Affiliate Marketing
3. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.