When I started content marketing in 2013, mine Digital marketing The analytics strategy was refreshing Google Analytics To check whether side views have expired. Climbing traffic meant that we won; The traffic demolition meant panic mode.
In many B2B -Saas roles, I learned that the persecution of traffic alone cannot answer the question that every manager asks: “Does our marketing actually work?” I sat in countless meetings where nobody had a clear answer.
Most teams are stuck in the way of thinking “More traffic is better”, but the traffic only tells part of the story. If you want to know what really driving results are, you have to go beyond the basics.
In this article, I will be the digital marketing analysis that I can rely on to make more intelligent decisions, demonstrate effects and to answer this executive question confidently. Set a bookmark for this guide and jump to what you need the most.
Table of contents
What are digital marketing analyzes?
Digital marketing analyzes are the translation of customer behavior into implementable business data. Digital analysis tools can help companies understand what consumers do online, why they do it and how this behavior can be converted into digital marketing campaigns.
Digital marketing analytics help you to understand what your audience is doing online – and whether these actions help your company grow.
I think of digital analyzes than what helps me read between the lines. It is one thing to know that someone has clicked or filled out a form – but I want to know what that works for me.
Web analyzes mainly adhere to metrics on site-level side views, bounce rates and session times. But digital marketing analyzes continue. You pull data from your channels – e -mails, ads, social – and help you to understand how your overall marketing works and where it promotes real results.
Knowing digital marketing indicators
I was glued on side views and social impressions early on. They looked great in a report – but they didn’t tell me whether we brought in leads, close offers or expand the business.
We moved in and checked all the usual boxes – but none of it turned into leads. At some point I stopped trying to make the reports look good and ask: does this actually work? Then I started to concentrate Metrics that showed real effectsNot just movement.
Below you will find the most valuable metrics that I have found in various areas of digital marketing – starting with the basics.
Best metrics for website marketing analyzes
These are the metrics at the site level that I most often follow to understand how content and UX are carried out:
Guest
I concentrate on unique visitors because it shows me how many individual people come to the website – not only updated or repeatedly views. If I check the content, this is one of the first things I look at.
Side view
Each charging counts as a side view. It is not the most insightful metric in itself, but it helps to recognize trends and identify content that attracts attention.
meeting
One session contains everything a person does on your website – click around, read several pages and possibly fill out a form. It ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. I use sessions to get a feeling for how deeply a person’s commitment goes beyond a single side view.
Traffic
I rarely look at traffic in isolation. I pursue it over time and in the context with other metrics -especially the conversion rate -to understand whether the traffic we have received is valuable.
Traffic to channel
This shows where your visitors come from – search, social, e -mail, directly, etc. I constantly use it to find out which channels do well and where we have to shift the focus.
Traffic to device
This tells me whether people rummage on your cell phone, desktop or tablet. I always check this when I stop the content layout or the troubleshooter-especially if the conversion rates are low at a device type.
Relationship of the new traffic to returning traffic
This metric compares first visitors with people who were previously on their website and as percentages. I love this metric because it shows whether you expand your audience (new traffic) and at the same time hire the existing visitors (give back traffic).
Time on page
This metric helps me to find out whether people stay together. If time is high, this usually means that the content is useful or committed. If it is low, I take it as a sign to rethink the intro, formatting or the value of the page.
Interactions per visit
I look at how many actions on average click CTAs on average during a session, download content, watch videos. It gives me a feeling for whether we offer enough value or opportunities to get involved.
Bounce rate
I follow the bounce rate to see how many people go to one side. Sometimes a high bounce rate is fine – if someone finds exactly what they need on a target page. However, if I see unexpected spikes, this usually means that there is a problem with the content or that the page is not loaded correctly.
Kern -Web -Vital
These are the signals from Google for user experience – things such as load speed, layout shift and reaction ability. I not only keep an eye on them for SEO reasons, but because nobody stays on one side who loads everywhere like molasses or jump.
Scroll depth
I pursue how far the visitors scroll down on our sides to understand the commitment of the content. If people don’t roll over the wrinkles, I know that the opening content works or that the side design does not pull them in.
Best metrics for lead generation
These are the metrics with which I follow my efforts to generate lead:
Call-to-action (CTA) click rate
I look at CTA clicks to measure whether the content does its job. It is a quick bowel test: if a contribution receives solid data traffic, but nobody click on “Get the Guide” that tells me that something does not end up – either the content has not been connected or the offer has to be revised.
Submissions
Submissions count the number of people who fill out a form after clicking on a CTA. If we have high CTA clicks but low submissions, this usually indicates friction – maybe the form is too long or the offer does not feel worth it.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate pursues how many people take a desired action compared to the overall visitors (e.g. to register something or download something). I pursue this over the types and channels to see what is converted – not just what attracts attention.
Cost per lead (CPL)
CPL tells me how much we spend to create every lead. I break this up through the channel and campaign to find out which are efficient and which empty the budget without results.
Lead speed rate
This measures how quickly guided tours go through the funnel – from a new lead to MQL or from MQL to the customer. If the pace slows down in a certain phase, I know that it is time to rethink our nourishing strategy or look for friction.
Free test traffic rate
If you run a free test model, this is critical. It shows how many people who start a trial version become paying customers. I use it to combine top-of-funnel content with the actual income and flags in which the potential customers may drop.
Popup conversions
Pop-up conversions follow how many visitors fill out forms that were triggered in the middle of the browser. While pop-ups can be annoying, I found that relevant, relevant, relevant, especially if it is bound to the intention.
Relationship generated leads and marketing qualified leads (MQL)
This metric compares the overall lines with those that actually fit well. I pursue this to evaluate the quality of the leads that we bring in and how well our content match with our ideal customer profile.
Leads to closure ratio
Closing the relationship between leads shows what percentage of their leads to pay customers. This is one of the clearest ways to measure content effectiveness – if a certain offer or a certain campaign bring leads that never close, it is time to rotate.
Best metrics for e -mail marketing
E -Mail was one of the most constant actors in every role I had. It is uncomplicated, flexible and still delivers when it is done well. These are the metrics that I see to find out whether an e -mail campaign is doing their job.
Open rate
This tells me how many people have opened an e -mail from everyone I sent it to. I use it to test subject lines and timing. When the opening rates fall under our usual base line, I rummage about whether the content felt relevant – or whether it even made it into the inbox. For B2B Saas, I generally want to hit at least 20%.
Open according to device
This shows which devices (mobile, desktop, tablet) use people to read e -mails. Most people check e -mails on their telephones, so I always make sure that our design works well on mobile devices first.
Click rate (CTR)
CTR follows how many people clicked a link in the e -mail. I have seen big differences here based on personalization and listening. The more the message was targeted, the better this number will look.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate pursues how many e -mails did not make it into the inbox of a person. I look at it early to catch list problems. If it spikes, I remove outdated or bad addresses.
Fromkunting rate
When more people go than join in, I take it as a sign that we either send too often – or simply don’t give people a good reason to assert themselves.
List the growth rate
This metric shows whether our list tends up or down. If more people deregister than register, I take a closer look at our content or our shipment frequency.
Best metrics for social media
The trailer counts could look impressive in a DIA deck, but they do not pay the bills. Here are the social metrics that I follow to understand whether our efforts work:
Engagement rate
I calculate this by taking all likes, comments, shares and clicks and then distancing them through our overall tracking. A high engagement rate tells me that people don’t just see our content – they take enough care to interact with it.
Follows and subscribed
This metric pursues how many people pursue their social accounts because they want to see more of their content. While the number of trailers is not everything, I pursue the growth to understand whether our content strategy attracts the right audience.
Shares
Shares are one of the strongest signals of the content. If someone is ready to publish something under their name or brand, this means that it will reach the brand.
Public growth rate
I use this to pursue how quickly our followers grow over time. I calculate it by shaping new followers through the total number of followers and then multiplied by 100. It is a more honest view than just seeing the number.
Post range
Post Reach tells me how many people have seen a piece of content. I pursue this as a percentage of the entire followers to get a feeling for how well we navigate the platform algorithms and timing.
Potential post office range
This metric appreciates how far our content could be based on who shared it and what size your audience. I don’t put it alone in the stock, but it helps to measure brand reinforcement. The potential range is typically 2-5% of this sum.
Share of the social voice
This metric compares how often people mention us to competitors. I follow both direct mentions (with @handles) and indirect (only brand name) to see how we appear in conversations.
Registration rate
Likes are the simplest form of validation, but they are still important. I use this metric to pursue positive reactions across campaigns and ensure that our sound ends up.
Best metrics for E -Commerce
Even if you do not run a full online shop, these metrics still play important if you sell something on your website:
Shopping trolley degree rate
I follow how many people add articles to their shopping cart, but do not complete the purchase. If this number takes care of, this usually means that something is switched off – maybe the cash process is chunky, or the prices are surprising in the last step.
Sales conversion rate
This shows me how many site visitors become customers. I also pay attention to microcon versions as product side views or add-to-cart campaigns to see where people cancel or become more serious by buying.
Email marketing opt-in
I pursue how many people register for surfing or checking out e -mails, and I break it up through traffic sources. It is an easy way to see which channels bring subscribers who want to hear from us again.
Customer acquisition costs
Customers are not always cheap. I calculate our overall marketing editions shared by the number of new customers who understand our actual costs per customer. The higher the number, the more we out and the narrower ours Profit margins.
Average order value
This is simple: overall revenue divided by the number of orders. I use it to see if people buy more expensive articles or add extras to their cars. Sometimes it can help optimize bundle or offer free shipping thresholds.
Income by source
This metric tells me which marketing channels are doing sales – not just traffic. Social can bring in volume, but if the search or e -mail makes more purchases, I twice twice.
These metrics treat the most important digital marketing analyzes across different channels. Depending on your marketing tools and channels, you can track additional metrics that are specific to your company.
But why are digital marketing analyzes so much more powerful than basic web analyzes?
Digital Marketing Analytics vs. Webanalytics
The most important difference between web analyzes and digital marketing analytics is to the scope.
Web analytics give you what happens on your website – page views, bounce rate, time on the page. This is helpful, but it doesn’t say whether these visits are transformed into leads or customers.
Digital marketing analytics continue. They help you to connect all your marketing efforts – e -mails, social, ads, blog content – and see how you work together to achieve the results. Instead of just looking at what people do on their website, they get a clearer look at how they found them, what influenced their decisions and what led to income.
I saw how teams determine the optimization for web key figures that look good on paper but do not lead to business results. I did it myself – spent months to improve the blog performance on the page on the page, just to recognize that these posts did not attract the right audience or have created a meaningful commitment.
If we had used digital marketing analyzes right from the start, we would have seen that we would not have organized our content with our goals or the buyer’s journey.
That’s why I keep coming back to Marketing and sales swung wheel. It’s not just about top-of-funnel traffic. It is about how everything works together – attracting people in every phase, committed and enthusiastic. Digital marketing analyzes make it easier to pursue this cycle and find out what is right to grow your company.
Web analytics gives you the puzzle parts. Digital marketing analytics will help you put them together.
What is a digital marketing analysis?
Marketers use a digital marketing analysis to understand how their current digital channels develop. This process also discovers new opportunities to achieve and include your target audience.
A digital marketing analysis is the first step towards developing a strong strategy for digital marketing analysis. I use this process to structure a business goal in results based on three broad categories:
- The relationship between different marketing channels
- People centered data on the buyer’s journey
- Income that is due to certain marketing efforts
Let us emphasize these main differential features.
1. The relationship between marketing channels
Digital Marketing Analytics offers a solid insight into the direct relationships between their marketing channels. It is great to see how each of your channels (e.g. social media, blogging, e -mail marketing and SEO) appears. Nevertheless, the true power of analysis comes into play if you can easily merging the effect of the performances of several channels.
Suppose you have sent an e -mail to a segment of your database, for example. Digital Marketing Analytics not only tells how many people clicked on their e -mail to their website, but also how many of these people were converted into your company in leads.
You can also compare the effects of these individual e -mail with other marketing initiatives. Has this e -mail generated more leads than the blog post that you published yesterday? Or was the content you shared over Twitter more effective?
2. Personal-centered data on the buyer’s journey
As already mentioned, there is a central distinguishing feature between web analyzes and digital marketing analytics in the latter used person – not the side view – as a focus.
With digital marketing analysis you can track How their prospects and leads interact With their various marketing initiatives and channels over time. How did the lead get to find your website? From Google? Facebook? Direct traffic? Is this an active part of your E -Mail subscription base, click and convert them into marketing bans, which are presented by e -mail? Read your blog and have you downloaded content that could indicate an interest in your products/services?
Full-Stack Digital Marketing Analytics can tell you all of this and more and provide you with extremely valuable leading information that can help inform the direction of your future campaigns.
If you look at all this information as a whole, you can understand the trends between your potential customers and leads and which marketing activities are valuable in different phases of the buyer’s journey.
Perhaps you will find that the last conversion point of many customers was on a certain E -book or white paper. This data enables you to implement an effective lead management process so that you can evaluate and prioritize your leads and determine which activities contribute to a marketing qualified lead (MQL) for your company.
3. Income that is due to certain marketing efforts
One of the most valuable functions of marketing analyzes is the ability to attribute specific marketing activities to sales sales. Sure, your blog can be effective when generating leads, but do these leads become customers and earn your business money? Marketing analyzes with a closed loop can tell you.
The only requirement here CRM platform (Customer Relationship Management) are connected.
If you have this data with a closed loop, you can find out whether your marketing initiatives contribute to the end result of your company. This enables you to decide which channels are most important for sales.
Perhaps your blog is your most effective channel to generate customers, or vice versa that social media is only as powerful as an engagement mechanism and not as a source of sales.
You will set better and more result -oriented goals if you measure how your channels work together, track behavior about the buyer’s journey and tie back revenue with certain marketing efforts.
Now let’s talk about how these marketing analyzes can be used effectively.
How to use digital marketing analyzes effectively
I had campaigns with solid traffic and decent commitment – but nothing to show. Then I realized that metrics on surface level did not tell me what I really had to know.
I was there. The dashboards look good, but if someone asks: “Does it work?” – I don’t always have a clear answer.
For me, this usually means one of two things: the goals are blurry, or we measure things that do not matter.
So I learned to cut the sound and use analyzes to make better and more confident decisions.
Master Smart Marketing with our free, targeted Excel template.
Intelligent goals
I spent far too much time to stare at dashboards without really knowing what to take away from them. Traffic is high – so what? If I can’t explain what that means for the business, the number doesn’t help me much.
Before I immerse yourself in data, I try to be specific what I strive for. “More traffic” is not a real goal -something like “Bio -Bio visits of X pages by 20%”, gives me a direction and something I can look at.
I use the intelligent framework to form goals that are actually useful:
- Specific – – Instead of “getting more traffic”, I will determine a goal like “Increase organic traffic from our target keyword group by 25%”.
- Measurable – If I can’t insert a number on it, I will not know if I am making progress. I always set a baseline first.
- Reachable – I try to stretch, but not so that I can set myself so that I fail. Past performance helps me to stay realistic.
- Relevant – I tie every goal to a greater result – regardless of whether it is generated by pipeline, improves the retention or increases sales.
- Punctual – Every goal receives a deadline. Otherwise it is only a wish list.
A good goal gives me something to measure, optimize something and share something when someone asks: “How does this campaign run?”
In my experience, most marketing goals fall into one of three buckets:
- Traffic growth and diversity of channels – bring in consistent visitors from several sources
- Lead generation – to transform this traffic into real prospects
- Description of sales – Tracking which marketing efforts contribute to the actual sales
It is not always easy to get to these insights. Most teams -including -move out data from five or six different platforms: e -mail metrics from a tool, social statistics from another, blog performance from the CMS, etc.
If everything is distributed via different tools, it is difficult to connect the points – or find out where you can spend your time.
I found it much easier to get clarity when I use one All-in-one marketing and reporting platform This brings all of our reporting together. Instead of jumping between tools, I can see the full picture and make faster calls about what it is worth double – or canceling.
Campaign reporting
Instead of looking at each traffic source or channel in isolation, I use custom reporting functions Setting up views at campaign level. In this way I can see how a campaign develops on all platforms -not only, like a blog post or an e -mail address. I want the whole picture, from the first touch to the final conversion.
I used Drift Kings Media’s Marketing Hub Create views at campaign level that combine data from blog posts, emails, CTAs, landing pages and ads. These reports helped me to recognize the results and what needs to be adapted.
Here are some that I rely on the most:
Web traffic according to the original source
I use this to see where visitors come from – search, e -mail, social, etc. – and how these sources perform over time. It is invaluable to discover which channels can most effectively convert traffic into leads or customers.
For example, I could find that social media drives a lot of traffic that transports transport to the leads with triple rates. This insight completely changes the strategy of content distribution.
First conversion through the original source/persona
This report shows me which content or CTAs led to the first conversion of someone – and where they come from. I also segment after persona if I can. This helps me to understand which audience groups react in different types of content.
Contacts funnel report
This report helps me to follow how leading progress by the funnel – from contact with MQL, SQL and finally customers. If a large percentage of the leads is blocked to a stage, this usually means that something is missing -such as care email, better content or a clearer handover.
Marketing contribution to sales
This report is the key to combining the points between marketing and closed income. I use life cycle stages to see which leads became customers and their value. If I can bind a blog series or campaign to sales, this type of status guidance pays attention.
Customer acquisition costs
You can use customer acquisition costs in HubSpot Calculated fields or custom properties To show the entire marketing editions per new customer.
Content marketing is often associated with higher preliminary payments, but over time I have found that it leads to lower acquisition costs compared to paid channels. These reports with a closed loop help me to pursue the business results-not only vanity metrics. But all the findings in the world do not mean much unless they use them.
The actual value of digital marketing analysis is not only not only Proof of the management of marketing for the leadership – it uses this findings Optimize your performance About every part of your system.
With the reporting on closed control loops, I can also show how marketing provides the sales of support-INH LEADS that tend to convert.
Digital advertising Analytics
I have worked with companies that put a serious budget into paid ads – but do not say whether they brought in qualified leads or only clicks. And I understand it. It is easy to report via impressions or costs per click. It is much more difficult to follow what happens after Someone clicks.
After Gartner 2025 CMO surveyDigital channels now make up 61.1% of total marketing editions, with seven out of ten sectors investing more than 60% of their budget in online channels.
But metrics on the surface level such as the click rate only tell part of the story. You can only measure the actual performance if you combine display data with results – leads, customers, income.
In order to avoid this blind spot, I always make sure that our display data is directly connected to the CRM.
One thing that surprised me early on was how different different types of ads behave. Paid search and social media ads could drive fast conversions, but advertisements are more about visibility and long-term brand awareness. People may not click at all – but later they look for their brand or come back directly. If you only measure direct clicks, miss the effects.
The greatest shift in my entire digital marketing strategy came when I hired the treatment of ads as a silo. Now I consider it just a part of a larger, integrated marketing system. If I can measure it in the context -in addition to content, e -mail and everything else -I get a much clearer picture of what works and how to spend it smarter.
Grow better with digital marketing analytics.
After more than a decade in marketing, I learned that data traffic only tells part of the story.
What is important to me now is whether our work creates dynamics – brings the right leads, shorten the sales cycle and support the larger business goals. This is where digital marketing analyzes come into play.
I use it to recognize what works, what doesn’t and where I should concentrate next. It is less about building perfect dashboards than having enough clarity to make good decisions and explain it to the team (or your boss).
For me it begins with clear goals, simple reports and metrics that actually tie back to the results that are important to me – such as leads, income or customer loyalty.
And as soon as I can see how our efforts are combined across channels, it is so much easier to plan our next steps.
Note from the publisher: This post was originally published in February 2019 and was updated for completeness.