By Josanne Griffin-Mason, 10th February 2015

Measurement is what makes marketing a science. If you want to calculate the return on investment that your company’s marketing efforts are producing, insert these metrics in to your performance report today.

1. Total visits

Your website should be your primary marketing source, primed to nurture and convert existing and potential customers. If your marketing initiatives are effective, your website’s number of total visits will increase each month, but if you find the totals remain flat, or if they drop, considerable effort should be made to optimise your site.

2. New sessions

Use Google Analytics to determine how many of your visitors are new to your service and how many are returning users. A large percentage of recurring visits demonstrates a sticky website and a healthy level of user engagement, which should be a high priority for businesses with customer retention targets to meet.

3. Traffic source

Found in the ‘acquisitions’ section of Google Analytics, it’s a good idea to track this metric so you can segment where your audience is finding you, whether it’s directly, organically, through referrals, or via social media. If you’re running a full-scale digital marketing campaign, this knowledge will help you pinpoint which areas are outperforming the rest, allowing you to put more money behind them at a lower risk.

4. Number of impressions

If you are using paid-for advertising, or even simply posting on Facebook or LinkedIn, you’ll be provided with the number of times that your post has been seen by your followers. This number of impressions should be looked at in relation to the…

5. …click through rate

Measure the click through rate as a percentage of the number of impressions you are securing in order to determine how successful your first point of contact with the user is. The goal is to continuously improve CTRs by targeting audiences at specific times on particular domains, using a combination of carefully selected keywords, titles and images to attract their attention.

6. Conversion rate

You can set up unique conversion pixels for each of your campaigns or lead generation forms to provide you with the necessary insights to test different messages and designs. If you are not already doing so, incorporate a validated learning process in to your marketing strategy. This way, you can ensure that regular reviews are carried out on every campaign and intelligent adjustments are made to boost conversion rates.

7. Bounce rate

Many marketers fear a high bounce rate but it’s important to note that this statistic does not necessarily mean that visitors hated your website – after all, a high bounce rate could indicate that visitors found exactly what they were looking for when they landed on your site, thus didn’t need to dig any further. Either way, it’s important to place this metric in to your data analysis and optimise according to the actions you want your visitors to take.

8. Cost per lead

This amount will be specific to your business model. For instance, if you spent £500 on marketing in one month and acquired ten leads, the price you paid for each lead is £50 – and do remember to factor in the hidden expenses, such as management time and start up fees, too. Ultimately, you want to drive the cost per lead down each month through your marketing tactics, unless you find that the more expensive leads are of a higher quality and generate a bigger income for your business in the long run.

9. Social sharing

If building brand awareness is important to your business right now, ask your developers to code in social sharing buttons on your blog, which will display the amount of times a particular page is shared on Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and so on. The free analytics tools provided by social networking websites also track how many times a post is shared, so pull the data from here too, and you’ll get an understanding of how viral your articles, videos and infographics are.

10. Projected ROI

This is where your marketing aligns with your sales figures. To calculate your ROI, compare your cost per lead against your lead to close ratio, and then compare that figure to the value of your typical customer. So, if your cost per lead is £50 and your sales team converts those leads in to customers 50% of the time, each customer costs you £100. As long as your average customer spend is worth more than £100 to your business, your ROI is positive and your marketing campaign can be considered a success.

With ongoing analysis, these metrics will help you understand which strategies work best and why, allowing you to continuously refine your marketing tactics and measure the impact each campaign has on your business.