How to tell if your digital marketing is working

I have recently taken on a couple of new clients (a service based business and an online store) and the initial chats were interesting as both new clients had come from larger agencies. The feedback was similar ‘we are investing a lot of money but have no idea what we’re getting or if it’s working and the communication hasn’t been great’.

First up, there are many reasons why this situation can happen and any business relationship is a two-way conversation so this post is not about agency performance. It’s about how you can tell if you are getting value from digital marketing and how to improve / what to do if you feel that it’s not working for you.

Metrics for Success

Is it working is an easy question to answer:

Service based business: You know it’s working if you are actually getting enquiries, usually email form completions and phone calls, that you can convert into sales.

Online shop business: Of course completed online sales is your main metric.

Most importantly: In both cases the enquiries and sales need to be PROFITABLE after accounting for all of the costs to get the enquiry conversion or sale. As a business owner, you need to understand what it costs your business to get an enquiry and what it costs to convert this to a sale. All of this data is easily available to you!

Google Analytics & Search Console

You can get useful business information from the Google Search Console and Google Analytics. If these are set up for success you can view a simple report structure and dashboard that shows what’s happening on a day-to-day basis. For example, how many conversions (goal completions) happened this week and where they came from (e.g. Google Search, Ads, Organic Social). Reporting is essential to focus your time and spend on what works and to see when changes are needed. Marketing is rarely set and forget, you need to respond to your results.

Goals and Communication

Your goals should be the cornerstone of any marketing strategy and it’s essential you communicate these and provide feedback from the actual day-to-day experience in your business. The more that’s known the better the strategy and results. If you are not meeting regularly or talking with your provider then they can only guess (and maybe get by if they have enough experience in your industry) but you won’t get the sort of results that will impress and you’ll limit your business growth.

Digital Marketing Reporting

This can be quite generic and often not that useful especially if it’s just coming from automatic software without an explainer (not my vibe TBH). I am personally in communication with my clients a lot and doing personalised reporting based on the work and results rather than using software to do that. Budgets will influence this some weeks. For small business on a tight budget or if you’re not going to be communicating much, sometimes it’s better to use the time on the actual work. It’s important to get conversion reporting setup right from the start so you can check it and personalised reporting happening in a way thats actually useful and suitable for the individual client situation. If you have questions or specific reporting requirements make that clear to your provider.

Trust and feedback

Key questions to think about when you’re bringing outside expertise into your business:

• are you able to communicate your desired outcomes/results/direction?
• can you trust and let others deliver on the direction you set?
• will you provide regular feedback on results and whats happening in your business?

I’ll be back to update this with some specific examples to help you understand the different roles and how to get the best from your digital marketing agency.