20 Digital Marketing Metrics to Measure 202418 min read

Marketers often struggle to point out which digital marketing metrics they should focus on. These 20 metrics can really help you focus.

Marketing is all about gaining more awareness for your brand or product, knowing your target audience’s preferences, distributing your services appropriately, and in turn, making the most amount of sales possible.

You might be asking, how can I understand how my digital marketing is doing?

That is where digital marketing metrics can help you.

Now before providing you with the digital marketing metrics, it is important to let you know what digital marketing metrics mean.

Before learning about digital marketing metrics, you should be asking what are marketing metrics in general.

Marketing metrics are key values you can monitor to measure the performance of your marketing campaigns.

So you can understand digital marketing metrics are doing that but in digital platforms.

What Are Digital Marketing Metrics?

If you go by the digital marketing metrics definition, it is principally related to your key performance indicators or KPIs.

Digital marketing metrics are the values or measurements of your KPIs which help you track the way your consumers interact and engage through your websites or social media platforms.

Digital marketing metrics help you measure the performance of your digital marketing campaign.

They usually hold the total numbers or percentages of certain key factors upon measuring which you will have a better understanding of your digital marketing strategy.

So in short, digital marketing metrics are the factors that help you understand the possible outcome of your marketing efforts.

These are very important for marketers as they encapsulate the measurements of your on-page marketing performance, social media marketing performance, email marketing response, SEO marketing, total return, and revenue, etc.

To do all these though, it is mandatory to look after your key performance indicators or KPIs, and measure the metrics based on which you will understand how your website or service is doing.

Now you might be asking, are KPIs metrics?

To understand that, you need to think a bit more in-depth.

Are KPIs Metrics?

KPIs are the factors that indicate the goals of your business. Metrics on the other hand measure the progress or performance of specific business and marketing activities.

So the goal defined by KPIs will get justified by the metrics, as they will give you specific data about what sector of your marketing is deriving what kind of response.

For example, if you want to increase revenue or referral traffic for your website, you need to outline the goals and activities to achieve that.

Those will be your key performance indicators or KPIs.

The activities you perform to ensure that your KPIs are met, such as measuring cost per click, bounce rates, website traffic, etc., will be your metrics.

Based on your metrics, you can understand how your business will be impacted. You can also realize if your digital marketing campaign needs any kind of change or not.

Digital marketers not only market the products and services to the consumers but also look after these key performance indexes.

Cost per Lead, Returning Visitors, Conversion Rate, Goal Completion Rate, Click-Through Rate, Customer Acquisition Cost, and Customer Lifetime Value, these simple factors are also included in your KPI.

These key performance indicators will be better understood when they are analyzed by your digital marketing metrics.

With the great help of the internet, a new era of digital marketing has been unlocked with newer competitions and challenges. Digital advertising performance metrics are ever so important to measure.

Previously, any marketing strategy would be built upon creativity. However, nowadays you will not understand which creative sector of your marketing is working or not working and for what reason without the help of these marketing effectiveness metrics.

So now you have a better understanding of what are metrics in digital marketing.

Without further adieu, let’s jump into these key marketing metrics and digital marketing metrics formulas that you should definitely focus on.

20 Digital Marketing Metrics to Measure

Firstly, we will note down the top 5 sectors where your digital marketing metrics will matter the most.

These 5 types of marketing metrics are 1. Website On-Page Metrics, 2. SEO Metrics, 3. Social Media Metrics, 4. Email Metrics, and 5. PPC Metrics

After noting them down, we will break down the 20 most noteworthy digital marketing metrics to watch over for your digital marketing campaign.

Website On-Page Metrics

1. Website Traffic
2. Click-Through Rates
3. Traffic Source
4. Bounce Rate
5. Device Used
6. Exit Rate

SEO Metrics

1. Organic Traffic
2. Keyword Rankings
3. Backlinks

Social Media Metrics

1. New Followers and Growth Rate
2. Engagement Rate
3. Social Media Traffic
4. Conversion Rate

Email Metrics

1. Traffic
2. Opened Mails
3. Sign-up/Subscription

PPC Metrics

1. Cost Per Click (CPC)
2. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
3. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
4. Return on Investment (ROI)

This list is made to familiarize you with the different types of metrics to measure for your digital marketing campaign. 

You might be wondering about what these points actually represent. So we will provide some descriptions and examples about them as well.

Now let us go through the best marketing metrics to track.

As we have pointed out, the first 6 points below fall under your website’s On-Page Metrics.

1. Website Traffic

Driving Traffic to your website will be the primary focus in your digital marketing strategy.

Website traffic showcases how many new or retaining visitors have visited your website. It is a great indicator of how your website is performing.

You should definitely look out for drops or rises in your website traffic. It should give you a basic understanding of your online presence. 

If you tweak the design of your website’s color scheme or user interface, you can also notice if there are any drops or rises in website visitors.

This will greatly indicate if the change is resonating with your target audience and whether it is increasing user experience or not.

You can also notice the number of new and recurring visitors, their sessions, and time on page through analytics tools.

By the end of the day, many of your visitors could turn out to be customers and retain customers, increasing your conversion rate.

Among all your digital advertising metrics or digital advertising performance metrics, website traffic is the key one, and it is most easy to notice, observe, and measure.

2. Click-Through Rates

Click-Through Rates or CTRs measure the percentage of people clicking the ad which links to your website.

CTRs are very important as they can generate authentic leads.

According to WebFX, only 2-3% of the viewers from search engines like Google or Bing actually click on the ads.

However, many of the clickers could convert to consumers, which would gain you profit.

So notice the ups and downs of your CTR percentage. If you notice a sudden increase, it would indicate that your digital marketing team did a great job on that.

If the CTR declines, there might be some problem with the visual or textual aspect of your ad. So you might have to reconsider.

A high CTR will also increase your ad’s visibility on search engines down the line.

So overall, CTRs can indicate the quality of your ad and increase visibility which can lead to more conversions. It is an important indicator in your digital advertising performance metrics.

3. Traffic Source

With traffic sources, you can notice whether the traffic you are getting is coming from organic search results, referrals, or paid results. It is one of the most vital metrics in digital marketing as well.

Let’s talk about the 5 most common traffic sources.

Organic traffic sources would mean your visitor found your site directly through a search engine.

Direct traffic source would mean the visitor directly typed the URL to your site or webpage.

A referral traffic source would mean another website referred to your site by providing a backlink.

Paid search result source refers to visitors you gain from paid ads in search engines and websites.

With that being said, you can understand why traffic source is one of the most important marketing metrics to measure advertising effectiveness.

4. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is another one of the most important digital marketing metrics.

If you have ever pressed on a website link and left right after you have visited it, we can say you have bounced right off.

How many people do that for your website is indicated through the bounce rate.

Of course, you want people to engage with your website. However, if they neither stay nor click on another page, that would increase the percentage of bounce rate.

Usually, vocabulary or dictionary website’s have the highest bounce rate, as people do not have much business after getting their word or info.

However, your business site should be attractive. The more time a user is supposed to visit your website, the more chance there is that the visitor will be converted into a customer.

If you notice a high bounce rate on any of your webpage though, you should think about fixing it. It could be a broken link, bad copywriting, or low quality image or color scheme/ text pallet or font that is making visitors turn away.

Make thoughtful changes and tweaks. It is possible you will see a change in bounce rate.

If the bounce rate goes up instead, you should probably revert back to the previous state instead. If it decreases, it would indicate the changes have been positive and have improved your user experience.

5. Device Used

With so many people browsing websites from mobiles, tablets, and other portable devices, device compatibility is one digital metric companies can not ignore.

You should make your website compatible with different devices to boost user experience.

Otherwise, you might notice a high number of bounce rate, low time on the page, and more exit rates than usual.

6. Exit Rate

While bounce rate measures how many of your viewers leave after visiting a single page, exit rate measures the percentage of viewers who leave your site after visiting more than one page.

With an exit rate, you can understand a customer’s journey through your website. You can gain a detailed example of how they navigate the site.

For example, if you have a blog explaining a certain topic, and also have how-to content to execute such a topic, those would be related. In turn, that would lead your visitor to view more pages for useful content.

Moreover, measuring exit rates is important to understand the impact of your online marketing strategy along with other usability issues.

Whether your page is visible and compatible, or whether the images and videos are loading correctly will also affect your website’s exit rate.

You need to have a strong landing page along with a strong overall presence for your website.

You can pick up more ideas about this from the blog Ideas for Personal Website Content.

This would enrich your visitors’ staying time and possibly lead to conversions.

So needless to say, the exit rate is a very useful metric for digital media measurement.

Now let us move on to the 3 SEO metrics from points 7 to 9 which are important metrics for your digital marketing campaign.

7. Organic Traffic

Your website’s search engine optimized content is meant to lead toward a better search engine ranking and more organic traffic.

In the website on-page metrics, we have already talked about organic traffic.

Working on your site’s SEO should help you to gain more visitors who directly search for your content.

8. Keywords Ranking

Keyword ranking for a website is another metric that drives organic traffic to your website.

You can improve upon existing keyword rankings or target newer keywords which would drive more organic visitors to your webpage and website.

All in all, keyword ranking is one of the most important marketing evaluation metrics to monitor your SEO efforts.

9. Backlinks

Natural backlinks simply indicate your site is valuable to other resources and websites as well.

It gives you a great deal of credibility and leads to more referral traffic to your website.

Moreover, it ensures that other websites also find your source reliable and thinks that these could be the best sources of information.

The more

So measuring how many backlinks you are getting is an important internet marketing metric.

Let us go through the 4 social media metrics from point 10 to 13.

10. New Followers and Growth Rate

Follower count is very much indicative of your growth in social media.

The more authentic followers or members you have from authentic accounts, the more credible your page or group tends to be.

There are many things to do to keep up to date with your target audience which we have discussed in our other blogs like A Guide to Social Media Advertising 2024, or Top 10 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2024.

Growing your total number of followers would ensure more growth and reach for you, your business, or your brand.

11. Engagement Rate

You have many followers on your page or many members in your group.

How many of them engage and interact with the content though? That is an important part of the metrics.

Through social media, you can notice the reach or view of a post, even more so if it is boosted.

However, how many people react, comment, and share the content also defines how engaging they find it to be.

Of course, there would be silent viewers who might enjoy the content, yet not interact.

Nonetheless, engaging content would lead people to interact, give feedback, and share with their peers.

As a result, it is very much necessary to measure engagement rate as one of the key digital advertising performance metrics.

12. Social Media Traffic

As we have already mentioned about new followers and or members for your page or group, those who are not your followers, subscribers, or group members might also be responsible for a lot of views, shares, comments, or referral traffic.

With the overall performance, you should definitely notice how many people your content is reaching and what are their demographics for maximum growth and better understanding.

That is how you can capitalize on your market better.

13. Conversion Rate

How many people become willing to take your product or services is a good indicator of how your marketing campaign is performing.

Simply divide the total number of conversions by the total number of ad interactions to measure your conversion rate.

For example, if you have 60 conversions from 1,000 ad interactions, your campaign’s conversion rate would be 6%, as (6/1000)*100 = 6.

Nowadays, social media attracts a lot of potential customers as social media is a great place for organically appealing and reaching various consumers at once.

Although conversion can mean a lot of things, like a direct sale, a completed download of your guide or e-book, a subscription or sign up through your email, it is very important to measure.

With that said, email marketing is also a large factor in any digital marketing campaign.

From points 14 to 16, we will discuss the examples of marketing metrics conveyed through emails.

14. Traffic

The total amount of emails you have sent would be your total number of email traffic.

15. Opened Email

Amongst all the sent emails, how many of the receivers have opened and read the email?

That would clearly indicate they have somewhat of an interest in the type of topic you are talking about, or the type of business you are doing.

So among all digital marketing or digital advertising metrics, the number of opened emails and downloaded content is an important one.

16. Subscription/ Sign-Up Rate

Of course, most of the email marketing is centered upon gaining a new subscriber to your newsletter.

A new sign-up would also possibly mean a regular reader of your article, or a visitor of your website.

So whoever is looking for the services you are providing, might eventually turn out to be a devoted customer.

Finally, we need to talk about these 4 pay-per-click or PPC metrics which are really important indicators for your digital marketing campaign.

17. Cost Per Click (CPC)

According to the cost of your ads per every click of a visitor, you can understand the total cost per click and divide it by the number of clicks to get the average CPC.

If you are getting a good number of conversions from your ads, your return or revenue would be greater than your cost.

That would clearly indicate you have a winning strategy based on your CPC.

18. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost per acquisition is another one of the key online marketing metrics.

It is extremely important to monitor and it can vary from industry to industry.

Also worth mentioning is that cost per acquisition or CPA is also sometimes denoted as cost per conversion.

These two are synonymous terms that are used interchangeably to detect what is the ad campaign costing to gain new consumers and revenue.

Cost per conversion or cost per acquisition is measured by taking the total cost of an advertisement campaign and dividing it by the total number of conversions.

For any digital advertising performance metrics, measuring cost per acquisition is important.

It is worth mentioning that cost per conversion highly depends on keyword difficulty. So if you notice your CPA increasing, it is recommended to use a long-distance targeted keywords.

In the end, it should help you attract more traffic while reducing the cost of conversion.

19. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

The revenue divided by the amount you spend on your ad campaign is your return on ad spend or ROAS.

It is one of the best digital campaign metrics to track because it gives you an idea of what return you can expect from your digital marketing campaign.

20. Return on Investment (ROI)

Among all the digital advertising metrics or digital advertising performance metrics, ROI is crucial.

ROI or return on investment is one of the most essential digital advertising performance metrics for any kind of digital marketing campaign.

For any kind of digital marketing campaign, measuring ROI is important.

The total amount of return or revenue deducted from the total cost of your marketing campaign would indicate your return on investment or ROI.

ROI is an unavoidable internet marketing metric among all other internet marketing metrics.

So now you know what the key online marketing metrics are. How do you measure these metrics with success?

How to measure Digital Marketing Metrics Successfully?

All the aforementioned digital marketing success metrics need to be measured accordingly for you to properly capitalize on it.

You can use the 3 easy steps mentioned below to measure your digital marketing metrics successfully.

1. Defined SMART Goals: SMART stands for 5 key factors which your goals should have. These are as mentioned below.
   1. Specific: A clear description of what you need to achieve
   2. Measurable: Analyze the numbers of the metrics
   3. Achievable: Your target should not be unrealistic, but ambitious
   4. Relevant: Your smaller goals should be consistent with higher level goals
   5. Timely: Set timelines to achieve your goals to stay focused
2. Effective Tools: There are a lot of analytic tools to help you measure your on-page, SEO, social media, email, and PPC metrics correctly. Effective use of these tools can help you maintain your progress even further.
3. Reporting Methods: Craft an effective reporting method according to the data you find from analyzing your digital marketing campaign metrics. With proper reporting at the end of the measurement analysis, you will have a better understanding of how you should proceed.

Wrapping Up – 20 Digital Marketing Metrics to Measure

Now you have a distinctive idea about KPIs and digital marketing metrics.

Keep in mind the 5 sections into which we have divided the digital metrics for marketing. On-Page, SEO, Social Media, Email, and PPC.

Under these, there are the aforementioned 20 digital metrics for marketing that are most integral for your digital marketing campaign.

These digital advertising metrics or digital advertising performance metrics measure everything from your traffic, engagement, backlink, to your exit rate, CPC, ROAS, etc.

In different sectors, these digital advertising performance metrics indicate different levels of success. These are keenly observable metrics for your digital marketing campaign.

The key things to remember from this article are the digital marketing metrics definition, digital marketing metrics examples we have provided, how KPIs are measured by metrics, the types of marketing metrics, top marketing metrics, and digital marketing metrics formulas by which you can measure the metrics successfully.

With these digital marketing campaign metrics regularly observed, you can be assured that you will have a better understanding of the status of your digital marketing campaign.

You may also like –