What Metrics Should You Be Tracking

I saw an interesting piece of data this week released through Marketing Sherpa which looked at research conducted on over 1800 businesses last year using a benchmark survey technique that showed the following results.

 Now I find this somewhat interesting that the most popular response at 79% was traffic. As the original article rightly pointed out, other than media companies, most other businesses do not sell traffic. They sell products in the form of goods and services that they need to sell.

 Surely the definitive metric for most businesses needs to be sales, or at least qualified leads that you can make a reasonable argument will drive sales in the longer term. However only around 2 in 3 (68%) of the sample group selected sales. Food for thought.

More broadly I believe that some of the readers may also be thinking about now that surely the definitive metric for any business would need to reflect the primary function of the website, blog or other platform type which to play devil's advocate may not be sales. And yest they would be right.

The vast majority of all  businesses of course are profit seeking by nature and therefore in the real world should make the effect that the site has on overall turnover a key metric but for Government, not for profits and charities.

So regardless of what type of business you are in, what market you operate in and what type of website, blog or micro-site you have operating, reverse engineer the metrics by going back away from what it is your trying to achieve and then basing the key measurement metrics on those primary and secondary outcomes.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.