Inbound Marketing Analytics 101: Three Principles to Start With

Inbound marketing is always changing, being shaped and being understood in different ways every day. This is in part due to analytics. Part of our job as inbound marketers is to make sense of all the numbers and arrows and justify making the wheel turn to discover the how and why.

Within inbound marketing analytics, there are many different aspects, fundamentals and tactics. Using them correctly will lead you to not only what works, but what doesn’t work and how to improve it. Most importantly, this type of insight gives you foresight into future decisions and challenges.

There are many different marketing channels you can and should be measuring with your inbound marketing analytics, from social media and landing pages to email marketing and blogging—so many in fact that you could write an eBook on each channel! But you must start somewhere. So here are three basic yet important principles to start analyzing.

1. The Mothership

Your website is your vessel, your enterprise. All roads lead here, so understanding its analytics and taking care of it will always end in a smoother ride. Make sure you are measuring:

• Unique Visitors – the total number of visitors to your site not counting repeat visits. This metric is important to monitor. If it is increasing, that gives you a good idea something is going right.
• Traffic Sources – keeping an eye on your website traffic sources not only allows you to understand where these wonderful leads are finding you, but also lets you know how your search engine optimization (SEO) is doing.
• Page Performance – knowing that your blog page is a lot more popular than your About Us section will come in handy when you’re trying to decide which page to add that opt-in box to.

2. Landing Pages

Landing pages can be considered a core principle, the destination to attract visitors and get the conversions you deserve! Here are a few analytic points to consider within your landing page:

• Compare and contrast your page views and submission rates to understand what works best.
• Time will always tell – track results over time as you improve conversion rates.
• Crunch the numbers to find out what landing page offers work best to give you the leads you want.
• Find out who is in the driver seat – finding out which channels drive the most traffic can help spotlight your strengths while notifying you where to improve.

3. Distribution

Know your reach—then keep reaching. There are a lot of different channels within inbound marketing that can help you find those who don’t already know and love you! Consider:

• ROI – knowing your sources will help you justify your efforts.
• Compare and contrast your sources—what works for one channel may or may not help another. Put on your experimenting shoes!
• Knowing what channel is working best within your social media efforts will give you a great understanding of where to focus your efforts.

Although each channel has beginner, intermediate and advanced analytical stages, these three points make a great place to start. Be sure to remember Excel will be your best friend through this ongoing process as you begin to track results and are able to go back to compare and contrast your reports.

What other analytics do you track within these three principles? Let us know in the replies!

Photo Credit: kweenb

Zakir Ghazi is an Associate Technologist for Kuno Creative. He enjoys going to concerts and keeping up on all the latest social media and technology trends. Connect with Zakir on Twitter and Linkedin.