<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/68fa11d207bb48fc33c2516a_651d3d367d7701ed39c19ee8_625556f724eeb4511d7a3ad2_Commonly%252520Overlooked%252520Marketing%252520Metrics.jpeg" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Growth</span> <h1 class="gn-title">13 Overlooked Marketing Metrics, and When to Use Them</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>11 April 2022</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>9 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-body"> <p class="gn-lede gn-reveal">If someone asked you to create a bingo card of words most commonly heard in Marketing, 'metrics' would be one of the first on there.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">It's what we use to measure the success (or otherwise) of our efforts. But with so many of these indicators available, it's easy to select one or two for our usual reporting and simply ignore the rest.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Capacity and resource can partly be blamed for this. Small marketing teams often don't have the time in their day-to-day schedules to go as granular as they might like when scrutinising data. As long as the overall picture is looking good, other things become less of a priority.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">So what? Well, this most likely means that there are plenty of useful metrics that you're overlooking across your marketing channels, metrics that, when scrutinised, can provide useful information to help improve performance.</p> <p class="gn-reveal"><em>If you'd like to dive deeper into your data but don't have the time, The GO Network can help with that. </em><a href="https://www.thegonetwork.com/get-in-touch"><em>Let us know what you're looking for</em></a><em> and we can put you in touch with one of our specialist data and insights agencies.</em></p> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">01</span>Paid Social</h2> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Saves and shares</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">Saves and shares are a good indicator of ad-to-audience relevance and has the added benefit of free reach and impressions.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">If someone saves an ad and then returns to it, there is no advertising charge. If you share an ad to your own or a friend's profile, the ad has the potential to be displayed to the user's audience free of charge. Any interaction with these saved ads is free, and an ad with multiple shared can significantly boost campaign performance without the additional cost.</p> <figure class="gn-fig gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-fig__media"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/68fa11d107bb48fc33c25147_62556adf7cfdc14bdbdb7f46_Paid%2520Social_Article%2520Image.png" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto"></div> <figcaption>Paid social channel overview.</figcaption> </figure> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Comments</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">An ad with many comments can be a positive indicator that your ad and your audience are a good match. They can also give unfiltered, word-of-mouth insights into your product or service. Look out for comments that contain a specific theme or similar descriptors. These can provide insightful trend data into how certain audiences feel about your business.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Whether positive or negative, they can be turned into actionable data points that expensive and time-consuming <a href="https://www.getfeedback.com/resources/csat/customer-satisfaction-score-csat-complete-guide/#:~:text=Customer%20Satisfaction%20Score%20(CSAT)%20is,particular%20interaction%20or%20overall%20experience." target="_blank">CSAT or BPS</a> surveys might not have uncovered. Lastly, take note of how users speak about your product or business. Is it formal/informal? Use of specific phrases or references? Ad comments may inspire new methods to speak to your audience in a way that better resonates.</p> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">02</span>SEO</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">To discuss overlooked metrics in SEO, we spoke to Declan Reilly, Head of SEO at The GO Network Member Evoluted. <a href="http://www.evoluted.net/">Evoluted</a> are an award-winning digital design, web development and digital marketing agency based in Sheffield.</p> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Segmentation</h3> <p class="gn-reveal">Declan believes that not enough segmentation happens when looking at metrics for SEO.</p> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"It's definitely great to look at the full picture too but identifying how you are impacting visibility/traffic/sales at more defined levels across your site will give you a much clearer picture of your performance."<cite>Declan Reilly · Head of SEO, Evoluted</cite></blockquote> <figure class="gn-fig gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-fig__media"><img alt="Declan Reilly, Head of SEO at Evoluted discusses overlooked metrics in SEO" src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/68fa11d207bb48fc33c2514d_6255704e3a810e6c2f6b1df2_Evoluted_Article%2520Quote.png" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto"></div> <figcaption>Declan Reilly, Head of SEO at Evoluted, on the importance of segmentation in SEO metrics.</figcaption> </figure> <h3 class="gn-reveal">How can these metrics be used to improve performance?</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"Proper segmentation across a site you're working on will allow you to focus more energies on the pages that make the true difference in a business' performance. For instance, by separating blog performance from your money pages, you can better tall how your top of funnel content is working verses the bottom of your funnel."<cite>Declan Reilly · Head of SEO, Evoluted</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Which metric is often considered to be the best measure of success in your specialism?</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"The best measure of success in SEO is the end goal of organic revenue / enquiries. Metrics around visibility, sessions or user experience are great, but more as measurements to support that end goal of more business."<cite>Declan Reilly · Head of SEO, Evoluted</cite></blockquote> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">03</span>Organic Social</h2> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Bounce Rate</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">When reviewing bounce rate, you can see what you need to do to improve your website's 'stickiness.' The longer a visitor stays on your website or other marketing material, the better it is for SEO and conversion.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Bounce Rate gives you a good idea of the quality of your landing pages and other marketing material. A high Bounce Rate could be a sign that your landing pages aren't relevant or useful to your visitors.</p> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Audience growth rate</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">Audience growth is one of the most basic, yet also one of the most critical metric for judging organic social performance. Audience growth rate is defined as the change in audience size on a social network (that is it say, it is the rate of decrease in the total number of followers and fans after certain social media activity.)</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Using this metric will allow you to see how well a post/entire campaign has performed. To calculate audience growth, measure new followers gained after a social media activity over a period of time. Then, divide them by the total number of audience. Now all you need to do is multiply by 100 to get a percentage fore audience growth rate.</p> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">04</span>Email Marketing</h2> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Opens by device</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">By knowing how your subscribers are reading your emails can inform you how to design your emails. You should always use templates that look good across both mobile and desktop devices, but if most of your opens happen from a smartphone, you'll want to take extra care to prioritise these recipients.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">To do this, a more concise design with less text and fewer options to click out to additional content can streamline the experience for readers on a smaller screen. If most are opening your emails from a desktop, you have greater flexibility for the design and content.</p> <figure class="gn-fig gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-fig__media"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/68fa11d207bb48fc33c25156_62556a3269d08756df990b2e_Email%2520Marketing_Article%2520Image.png" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto"></div> <figcaption>Email marketing metrics overview.</figcaption> </figure> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: List growth</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">If you're not adding new readers to your email lists, the size of said lists will eventually decrease over time (<a href="https://optinmonster.com/10-proven-ways-to-reduce-email-unsubscribe-rates/#:~:text=What%20is%20a%20Good%20Unsubscribe,have%20some%20work%20to%20do." target="_blank">even if your unsubscribe rate stays under 2%</a>.) Audiences can be grown organically by encouraging current subscribers to share your content, offering bonus content to subscribers that aren't available elsewhere or adding widgets to your site prompting visitors to subscribe. You can monitor the success of your efforts by keeping an eye on how quickly your lists grow.</p> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">05</span>PPC</h2> <p class="gn-reveal">Amanda Walls, Director of <a href="https://cedarwood.digital/">Cedarwood Digital</a> (another award-winning network member) believes that marketeers often get tied up in digital performance metrics, things like "CPC, CPA, ROAS etc, without understanding how they tie back to fundamental performance for the business."</p> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"Really, we need to start by understanding the business goals, what do they need to achieve and in what volume? Understand this means we can build out the metrics that will deliver true business values."<cite>Amanda Walls · Director, Cedarwood Digital</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Conversion Rates &amp; Values</h3> <p class="gn-reveal">Amanda believes that metrics such as Conversion Rate and Conversion Value are two of the most overlooked with it comes to PPC. "The most overlooked metrics are often those that tie directly to the client's business goals."</p> <h3 class="gn-reveal">How can these metrics be used to improve performance?</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"By identifying and tying our "digital" goals more closely to our client goals means we can develop strategies that are designed to meet what our client's need rather than achieving vanity metrics. This can include tying our metrics in with client's offline data, identifying what the ideal customer/conversion value looks like &amp; adjusting our marketing accordingly. By focusing on direct metrics rather than vanity metrics means we are delivering more of the right kind of customer to our clients rather than just delivering visitors to the website."<cite>Amanda Walls · Director, Cedarwood Digital</cite></blockquote> <h3 class="gn-reveal">In the context of your specialism, what are the most overlooked metrics &amp; what do they show/why are they important?</h3> <blockquote class="gn-blockquote gn-reveal">"Achieving business goals, I think it's easy for us to put soft metrics on these along the lines of improving a client's ROAS but it's the business goals that account. This can be centred around delivering the right kind of visitors, delivering the right quality of leads &amp; also sales of the right products. Rather than just driving traffic to the website by focusing on business goals, we can provide real value and this is where our client's get the best marketing return."<cite>Amanda Walls · Director, Cedarwood Digital</cite></blockquote> <figure class="gn-fig gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-fig__media"><img alt="Amanda Walls, Director of Cedarwood Digital discusses overlooked metrics in PPC" src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/68fa11d207bb48fc33c25150_62555393d854283dbbd639dd_Cedarwood%2520Digital_Article%2520Quote.png" width="auto" height="auto" loading="auto"></div> <figcaption>Amanda Walls, Director of Cedarwood Digital, on tying PPC metrics to client business goals.</figcaption> </figure> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">06</span>PR</h2> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-increase-referral-traffic-and-get-more-leads#:~:text=Visitors%20that%20come%20to%20your,that%20visitor%20as%20referral%20traffic." target="_blank">Top referral sites</a></h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">'Referrals' are recommendations for further information, endorsed by the site that hosts the link. Any traffic that comes through your website from a source other than Goggle is reported as a referral. Looking at referral traffic shows which online media outlets are driving people to your site from earned coverage and can often throw up a few surprises.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Businesses want high profile pieces but giving routine content to more-technical trade publications that go into the nuts and bolts of your business is a good way of getting people onto your site and into your content library.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Looking at referral sites can show how well your press strategy is going. If you link to other pages of your site or a call to action, rather than always linking to the homepage, this can help prospects move through your site and give you a better understanding of where visitors are coming from.</p> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Share of Voice</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">Often abbreviated to SoV, Share of Voice is a metric that measures a brand's mentions in the media against the mention of your competitors. Understanding the percentage of media that your brand is mentioned in is a good indication of your authority in your field.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Your Share of Voice percentage can be calculated by taking mentions in industry publications and dividing this metric by mentions of all brands in your industry and multiplying by 100. For example, if your brand had 600 mentions in industry publications, and the total number for all brands in your field was 2500, the equation would be 600/2500 x 100 = 24%. Share of Voice is a great way of benchmarking your PR team's success.</p> <div class="gn-divider gn-reveal" aria-hidden="true"></div> <h2 class="gn-reveal"><span class="num">07</span>Content Marketing</h2> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Average time on page</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">It's all well and good using SEO, paid ads and organic social to drive people to your site, but how many of your visitors are enjoying what they find there? This is why web traffic shouldn't be the only metrics you're measuring for the success of your content marketing. You should also look at the average time spend on your pages. This can be found in <a href="https://analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/course/6" target="_blank">Google Analytics</a> under Reports &gt; Behaviour.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">More time spent on a page is a good indication that the user is taking in your content rather than just skimming over it. It also indicates that the content is something that the user is looking for and matching their search intent.</p> <h3 class="gn-reveal">Overlooked Metric: Content downloads</h3> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong>Why is it useful?</strong></p> <p class="gn-reveal">The number of content downloads from your site can be a good way of measuring your content marketing. Downloadable content on sites usually includes white papers, templates, brochures, guides etc and are mostly gated. If a content is 'gated,' it means that it's hidden behind a lead form that a user must complete to download the content. It's a good way of being able to retarget users and shows eagerness to consume your content.</p> <p class="gn-reveal">Downloads are also a good way of measuring middle-of-funnel content. For example, if you are offering a content download at certain parts of your site, or within a blog post, you can use it to measure the success of your content at this part of the funnel.</p> <aside class="gn-callout gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-callout__label">What this means for you</div> <h4>Stop overlooking the metrics that matter most.</h4> <ul> <li><strong>Paid Social.</strong> Saves, shares and comments reveal ad-to-audience relevance and can generate free reach and unfiltered audience insights.</li> <li><strong>SEO.</strong> Proper segmentation lets you focus energies on the pages that make the true difference in a business' performance.</li> <li><strong>Organic Social.</strong> Bounce rate and audience growth rate show the quality of your landing pages and how well campaigns are building your following.</li> <li><strong>Email Marketing.</strong> Opens by device and list growth inform design decisions and signal the long-term health of your audience.</li> <li><strong>PPC.</strong> Conversion Rate and Conversion Value tie directly to client business goals, delivering more of the right kind of customer.</li> <li><strong>PR.</strong> Top referral sites and Share of Voice benchmark your press strategy and your authority in your field.</li> <li><strong>Content Marketing.</strong> Average time on page and content downloads measure whether visitors are truly engaging with what they find.</li> </ul> </aside> <p class="gn-reveal"><strong><em>If you'd like to know more about how any of the above channels can help with your marketing strategy, or how to use overlooked metrics to improve your current performance, </em></strong><a href="https://www.thegonetwork.com/get-in-touch"><strong><em>get in touch today</em></strong></a><strong><em>.</em></strong></p> </div></div> <aside class="gn-related gn-reveal" data-auto="related-reading"> <div class="gn-related__label">Related reading</div> <ul class="gn-related__list"> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/how-to-evaluate-your-marketing-agency-partners" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Growth</span> <span class="gn-related__title">How to Evaluate Your Marketing Agency Partners</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Use a SWOT analysis, step-by-step scoring, and a free checklist to measure agency performance and get more from every brand-agency partnersh</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/managing-your-marketing-capacity-for-a-streamlined-content-strategy" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Growth</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Managing Your Marketing Capacity For A Streamlined Content Strategy</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Balance content creation with asset maximisation. 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