Digital Marketing Metrics That Don’t Matter

How much time do you spend trying to make sense of your digital marketing metrics? If you’re finding it difficult to know what’s relevant and what’s white noise, this article is for you.

When you’re distributing your video, you probably want to focus on the data that will help you see how that video is performing, right? But with so many analytics to choose from, it can be tricky to determine which metrics actually matter. Otherwise, you can lose hours and hours each week on tasks that give you nothing in return.

By identifying which metrics you can ignore and which metrics you should focus on, you’ll know which activities you can kick out of your marketing strategy.

Dealing with Data

Many data analytics tools are available for your business. But if you don’t know what metrics you have at your disposal or how to use them, you’re not alone.

According to the 2017 report by CMO Council, just 7% of marketers said they were able to deliver “real-time, data-driven experiences across all customer touch points and across both physical and digital engagements.” If you want to join that small sliver, now’s the time to prioritize the right metrics.

The Difference Between Web Metrics and Digital Marketing Metrics

40% of marketers surveyed for Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2017 report said that their company’s top marketing challenge is proving the ROI of their marketing activities.

When you think about digital analytics and metrics, does your mind immediately go to the type of metrics associated with tools like Google Analytics? We love using Google Analytics for insights into our marketing activities. It can provide a massive amount of data and insight into your website. But you also need a more comprehensive view of how well your video distribution is working.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in web analytics like time on site, page views per visit, and page load speed. While these things are important for SEO, they don’t matter from a digital marketing standpoint.

The digital marketing metrics that matter are the ones that measure sales, leads, and traffic. Some of these metrics will come from your website, but others will come from your video content, social media, and email.

The Metrics You Can Ignore

With so many metrics available, it’s easy to lose sight of the actual purpose of digital marketing: increasing ROI. When you can see a direct relationship between a specific metric and business success, you can make smart business decisions based on that metric.

If a metric doesn’t serve an actionable purpose or can be easily manipulated, tracking it is a waste of time. In fact, these types of digital marketing metrics can actually do more harm than good. That’s because your marketing team may believe it’s getting results—even when those metrics don’t provide information about ROI or business growth.

This is especially true when it comes to video distribution. Since you’re aiming to get your video in front of as many people as possible, you’ll have a deluge of metrics to sort through from each channel and distribution method.

To accurately measure the return on your videos, here are the metrics you can ignore and their replacements.

Overall Bounce Rate

According to Google Analytics, a “bounce” is a visitor who leaves your site after they’ve only viewed one page. But what if that page was your Contact Us page, and they got everything they needed?

Replace It With: Individual Page Bounce Rate

Your main goal with video distribution? It’s likely to be centered around attracting people to your website so they’ll convert into leads and paying customers.

That’s why it’s more helpful to look at the bounce rate for your individual pages. Once people have viewed your video, you can see exactly what they’re doing next. Then, you can fix the pages with high bounce rates, so people will stay on your website for longer.

Page Views

An increase in your page views may give you the warm fuzzies, but is it actually growing your business? Not necessarily.

Quality beats quantity here, especially if you’re distributing a video and it’s driving traffic. It’s important that you’ve pinpointed exactly what you want visitors to do once they arrive at your site.

Replace It With: Conversion Rates

If you’re running a business, you want to turn a profit. That means a positive ROI. So why are so many marketers focused on page views and traffic?

Even if you have hundreds of thousands of page views, those page views are irrelevant  if no one is converting to a paying customer. Tracking your conversion rate will help you see if your video is working so you can focus on the activities that help increase conversions.

View Count

You probably want your video to be viewed by as many people as possible. And view count is important when you’re considering reach. But here’s the problem: Facebook and Twitter count video views after someone has been watching for just 3 seconds. Even for YouTube, a view count is just 30 seconds. This infographic by Buffer reveals just how widely these metrics can differ.

Reach is important, since you probably want to get your video in front of as many people as possible, but consider engagement instead.

Replace It With: Video Engagement

While video views measure quantity, engagement measures quality. If you’ve produced a four-minute video, you need to know whether people are dropping off after 30 seconds or hanging around until the call-to-action.

The good news? All of the video sharing platforms give you this information, so you can see how engaged your viewers are and how long you’re holding their attention. This information includes metrics like Average View Duration and Average Completion

Social Page Likes

When you distribute your video on your social media channels, only a small sample of your audience will see it. This is particularly true for Facebook. If your audience engages with your video, it will have a much greater reach. The video will be shown to people who are two or three people removed from the person who liked, commented, or shared in the first place.

If you get too caught up with how many page likes you have, you could make it more difficult for quality fans to see those videos in the first place.

Replace It With: Social Shares

This metric measures how many times your video is shared across each social media platform. The more that people share your video, the more views you’ll get. While this will increase your reach, it also allows you to see just how appealing your target audience finds your video.

People who are sharing your video probably find it relevant, funny, or helpful for their followers—and that’s a metric you want to measure.

You can increase your social shares in a few different ways. Simply asking viewers to share your video can make a big difference, so use this as a call-to-action at the end of your video. You can also use influencer outreach to get your video in front of a greater audience.

Email Open Rate

When you’re distributing your video through email, this may seem like a great metric to measure. After all, we all want potential leads to open our emails, read what we have to say, and watch our videos.

The issue? Your email open rate only tells you whether or not your email subject line was compelling enough to encourage readers to open it.

Replace It With: Click-Through Rate

When you distribute your video through email, you have two options: embed it directly in the email or link the video to your website.

When you link your video to your site, you increase your click-through rate. More importantly, you have an excellent opportunity to encourage viewers to share your video or engage with more content.

Constant Contact has compiled the average open and click-through rates for each industry. This means you can compare your metrics with your industry average to see just where you stand compared to your competitors. As you can see, there’s little point measuring digital marketing metrics that won’t lead to conversions, sales, and increased ROI. By measuring the right metrics, you can easily see how your video is performing online.

If you haven’t yet created your video, you’re missing out on a hugely effective marketing tool. Get in touch today so we can help you leverage this marketing strategy and increase your leads.