We’re living in a digital world – with more and more people using mobile phones, tablets, laptops and computers to consume the sorts of things they used to get from print newspapers and magazines and their TV and radio sets. Businesses need to go where their audiences are and so that means digital marketing if you’re going to keep up. This can be rewarding, cost effective, instant and engaging. But how do you know if your efforts have been successful? Here’s a few handy hints…

> See also: The digital marketing cloud war: who will win over the CMO?

Get data: The beauty of digital marketing is that you will be able extract data from your efforts. There’s no need to be daunted by this either – there’s plenty of material online to help you get used to the world of analytics and you’ll quickly find your way around. Mobile marketing is increasingly popular as a way of directly addressing the customers you are keen to reach and this can bear fruit in terms of data too. Use an effective service such as the one offered here, and you’ll be able to track the success of the links you send in your messages.

Identify the right metrics

This will depend on what you want to achieve but there are some common things you’ll probably want. Most basically you’ll want to see how many people are coming to your site.

Beyond that you also want to look at where that traffic comes from, your ‘bounce rate’ of how many people immediately leave your site, the demographics of your audience and your all-important search engine ranking. You need good links too and content must be at the heart of your strategy if you want people to mention your brand and get your name mentioned. Getting good links is a sign of success.

Social Media

Your marketing campaign might well be used to boost your social audience. Check your follower numbers as well as the number of retweets, favourites, likes and shares on Twitter and Facebook respectively. They’ll all help spread awareness and the more you get the more successful your campaign has been.

Money

For many people a successful digital marketing campaign is, put simply, one that makes you money. Once you’ve got all the data you need you should focus on at two figures. Firstly what is the ‘cost per lead’ from your campaign? How much have you spent and how many leads have you generated?

From there you’ll need to look at the ‘lead to close ratio’ or conversion rate. So if you’ve spent £500 and generated 10 leads that means you’ve spent £50 on each lead. However, if half of those leads actually become customers spending money on your products and services then that’ll be five customers at £100 each. If each customer has spent above that you’re in profit. If it’s below there could be two problems – either your marketing campaign has failed to generate enough interest or you’ve not managed to get those who showed an interest to part with their cash.

> See also: The evolution of marketing in 2015

If it’s the latter then your campaign might actually be a success and you may need to consider what you do once you’ve got the customers interested. Don’t just look at the number of customers and presume your campaign has or hasn’t worked.

Satisfaction

Another way of measuring the success of your campaign is to simply ask your audience what they think. There’s a number of ways of setting up online or mobile surveys – all will bring extremely useful feedback and help to shape your future efforts.