Is my marketing actually doing anything? It’s the age-old question that we face as business owners. Maybe you’re consistently posting and engaging online (or at least that’s what you’re telling yourself), but you’re not seeing your sales go up. That doesn’t mean your marketing isn’t working. 

Looking at your analytics is key to figuring out if your marketing is making progress in the first place as well as what that progress looks like. But even if you do have reports set up, it isn’t always easy to sift through allll of those numbers. 

We’re here to help! Here’s what to look at analytics-wise to see if your marketing is effective. We’ll cover: 

• Why marketing analytics matter
• Website metrics
• Social media metrics
• Email marketing metrics
• Lead and sales metrics
• Once you track your data, make sure you use it 

Why Marketing Analytics Matter

First, we know that data matters in business, but if you’re not a marketer, you might not know why you need to keep an eye on your marketing analytics (or what to look for). Won’t I just see my sales go up if it’s working? The truth is that there’s a little bit more to it than that, and once you understand WHY you’re tracking, it’s easier to understand “what” to track. 

You also don’t need to look at every single number you have available—instead, you want to focus on key performance indicators for your business and goals. Those are the numbers that are directly related to the channels you use and your goals, whether it’s building brand awareness, growing leads, or increasing engagement. By honing in on those numbers, you can track progress, make smarter decisions, and refine your strategy. 

Before you find that sweet spot where your marketing is generating leads and customers, you need to measure if people are even seeing your content, engaging with it, and if they’re interested. From there, you can refine your marketing strategy to get closer and closer to the sales you want to see!

Want more specifics? Here are four main places to start!

1. Website Metrics

Your website analytics are a great way to determine if people are aware of your brand, they enjoy your content, and they want to book with you. Take a look at these to start: 

• Traffic Sources - If you see a ton of your traffic coming from organic social media, that means that’s where people are finding out about your business. Maybe you’re spending 80% of your marketing time and money on Instagram… but you find that most of your traffic is coming from SEO. Whatever you uncover, this metric helps you determine where to put more of your marketing efforts to generate interest. 
• Bounce Rate - Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site quickly—meaning they didn’t find what they were looking for. That can tell you that your content needs work or there might even be an issue on your site that you need to fix first. 
• Time on Page & Pages per Session - The higher these numbers, the more people are enjoying your content. They’re landing on one page and curious to learn more, so they’re clicking around your site. This is also a good indicator that your website content is encouraging interest in your business. 
• Conversions - Arguably the most important site metric (though not the only one to pay attention to!). Your conversions show you how many people are actually purchasing, booking, or submitting their info. 

2. Social Media Metrics

Social media is a must for small business owners. It’s so helpful for growing brand awareness, but what does that actually look like in your numbers? Here are the social media metrics you can take a look at: 

• Engagement Rate - This helps you determine if you’re speaking to the right audience on social media. Even if you have a ton of followers, if your engagement rate is low it might mean that your content isn’t engaging them. 
• Reach and Impressions (now views) - This metric is another way to determine if your content is reaching the right audience. If your reach and number of views are low, you might want to experiment with different content types or switch up your copywriting. 
• Profile Link Taps - To go a level deeper, take a look at if folks are clicking on the links you share in your stories and profile. If people are seeing and engaging with your content on social, are they also clicking to view more on your website? 
• Follower Growth (but not just for vanity!) - If you’re looking at your follower growth by itself, you’re probably using it as a vanity metric (it looks great, but doesn’t really mean much). But in relation to the other metrics above, it can help tell more of the story about whether your social media efforts are reaching the right audience. 

3. Email Marketing Metrics

Now for your email marketing—it can be easy to only look at open rate, but there’s so much more at play to figure out if you’re marketing is really effective: 

• Open Rate - While not the only KPI you want to look at, your open rate is still an important metric to understand if your subject lines are enticing and if you’re offering the type of content that your audience wants to read. 
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) - Once your subscribers open your emails, are they clicking? This metric will tell you how often that happens, helping you determine if the content in your email is doing its job. 
• Unsubscribe Rate - While looking at the positives, you also need to look at some of your negative metrics (unfortunately). Your unsubscribe rate is important to keep low—if you see it grow, it might mean that your content isn’t relevant, or you aren’t doing a good job of letting people know why they’re getting your emails in the first place. 
• Opt-ins - This is the number of people who join your email list in exchange for something, which tells you that your lead magnet is working. 

PS: Want to grow your email list this year? Head here next.

4. Lead & Sales Metrics 

Generating leads and sales happens towards the bottom of your sales funnel, so they’re a little less obvious to track as part of your marketing efforts. But, at the end of the day, these are the metrics that help you generate more revenue. All of your marketing efforts won’t contribute to these directly (how amazing if that’s the case!), but the combination of your efforts should directly influence these metrics over time. 

• Lead Sources - Your lead sources help you focus on the channels where your audience is (like Instagram, Pinterest, SEO, or TikTok). 
• Lead Conversion Rate - Your lead conversion rate helps you determine two things: If your lead magnet is attracting the right potential clients, and if you’re nurturing them properly. 
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - You can get your customer acquisition cost by adding your sales and marketing costs in any period and dividing by the new customers you get in that time. This tells you if you’re spending your money efficiently and can help you stick to your marketing budget. 
• Lifetime Value (LTV) of a Customer - Your customers’ LTV is their average purchase value X their purchase frequency divided by their lifespan, which can help you determine how to allocate your marketing efforts between brand-new and existing customers. 

Once You Track Your Data, Make Sure You Use It

Tracking all of these metrics is just the first step, but using them to guide your decisions is the ultimate goal. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming either—with the help of an organized, visual KPI dashboard like Enji’s, you’ll already have all of these metrics in one place. Most can even be loaded automatically!

At the end of the day, all you have to do is set consistent time aside to review your metrics and look for positive and negative trends. It could be as little as an hour each month to see how your marketing is unfolding! Sign up for your free Enji trial to get started!