How you choose the metrics that matter

“For growth-driven marketers, measurement isn't an afterthought. It's one of the key reasons they’re succeeding and growing in an ever-changing, mobile-first world.” 

Matt Lawson, Google's Director of Performance Ads Marketing.

We’ve taken some of the pain out of planning how to measure your marketing effectiveness. Make a copy of our template for SMEs to get started!

Set your business up for success online by spending some time getting a clear view of what success might actually look like.

Far too often analytics is an afterthought but if you don't define your measurement goals from the beginning, you might not collect the right data to be able to measure the success of your online campaigns. A measurement plan helps us to prioritize the critical features we need to implement in analytics to get better visibility into customer paths to conversion. It also keeps us focused on the metrics that really matter to the business (eg. the conversion rate of online leads into offline sales), rather than on feel good or “vanity” metrics (eg. page views, bounce rate) that are easily manipulated.

How does this differ from other measurement plans?

I’ve seen many great variations on technical measurement plans (see this post on online-behaviour.com for a helpful template) outlining how events, custom dimensions etc should be tracked. What I felt was missing, however, was the precursor - the business documentation that clearly outlines objectives, KPIs and targets that must come before all that. Justin Cutroni has a great post on this topic that I looked to when creating this downloadable and shareable template for you to copy and make your own.

I’ve used Jellyfish Training in this example as our website has elements of all three of the broad website categories (e-commerce, lead-generation and content). There’s hopefully something in this template for every small and medium business! See below an excerpt relevant for a lead-gen business. Click on File > Make a copy once you open the link to customise the template for your business.

Your key performance indicators should be at the forefront of your mind when doing an analytics implementation. We have to spend time thinking about what we need to measure and why before jumping straight into tracking everything that’s trackable.

Who should I involve in this process?

Perhaps a member of your organization’s leadership team will be able to give you an idea of the overall mission of the company and where the company’s online presence fits into the organisation’s objectives. A close collaboration between the Analytics or Business Insights team and the Marketing team is important here too.

Great. I’ve copied your template and made my own. Now what?

Go ahead and share your creation with the Marketing and Analytics team to see if they have anything to add!  You can use this document to critically evaluate what metrics you are currently reporting on as a business. Do you already have access to the data necessary for the new KPIs you’ve come up with? If not, take a look at our Google Analytics training courses. Let us take you through the key features you need to implement to report on your Key Performance Indicators in Google Analytics.

If that, however, sounds like you might be biting off more than you want to take responsibility for, why not have a look at the kinds of Analytics services we can support you on.

If you do already have reliable, accurate data in Google Analytics, why not try your hand at building your KPIs into a dashboard using one of the templates available in Data Studio.

Through obtaining a clear view of our desired KPIs and where we stand with our current implementation we will be able to lay out a plan for the implementation road ahead.

Otherwise, as Benjamin Franklin once said: 

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Make sure you set your business up for success online by spending some time getting a clear view of what success might actually look like.

Looking at taking your analysis to the next level? Find out more about Advanced Analysis in Analytics 360.

Interested in learning more from Jellyfish Training? Check out our full range of training courses here.