Estelle Liotard is a professional content writer with several years of experience in the marketing niche. She is a contributing writer at both Trust My Paper and Grab My Essay. Her work also appears in several other online publications. When she’s not writing about digital marketing, she enjoys collecting vintage dinnerware, thrift shopping and today she talks in our blog about digital marketing in retail.
Retail marketing is a complicated, multi-faceted effort. Marketers are given the job of increasing audience reach, building trust and authority, earning customer loyalty, and improving brand recognition. Further, they must do all of this while meeting the expectations of customers navigating a variety of journeys. There’s also the relatively recent surge in available data to consider.
On top of this all, there’s been a surge in eCommerce growth. Recent events have contributed to those numbers going up even more, especially in the full-assortment grocery market.
Right now, there are plenty of opportunities for retailers to use digital marketing to create growth and revenue. However, in order to do so, they must understand which marketing efforts are working, and which are not. That requires establishing key performance indicators for each point in the sales funnel and determining best practices for both measuring and interpreting.
The following metrics will provide you with insights into your marketing success as it relates to the top of funnel customers.
Click-Through Rate
This is simply the percentage of users who click on a particular link. Ask any digital marketing agency pro. They will tell you that click-through metrics can be used for links in marketing emails, paid advertisements, even links within an article or blog post. It’s important that you not only collect the number of click-throughs but that you dig a bit deeper. For example, you may gain some good insights on click-through rates according to a specific demographic group or device.
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times an advertisement has been displayed on a screen. These can be taken from social media ads, Google Ads, even display ads. Just be aware that there are ways that this particular metric can be exaggerated. In spite of this small risk, the more you learn about impressions, the more you understand about your overall reach.
“If your subscription list isn’t growing it might be time to reconsider your messaging, or reach out with a better incentive to subscribe.”
Middle Funnel Metrics You Should Follow
Middle funnel customers are closer to making a purchase. They know what your brand sells. Now they are investigating further. The best place to collect middle funnel metrics is on your own website.
Number of Pages Per Session
A session is a single visit to your website. Pages per session measures the average number of pages that visitors click into while they are on your site. A high number can indicate that visitors are viewing a variety of products, and reading other content you have published.
Overall, having a lot of interaction on your site is a good thing. The only drawback is that if page visits are very brief, it could mean that customers are struggling with navigation. Make sure that you’ve included top of page navigation to your checkout page and other points of interest.
There are plenty of opportunities for retailers to use digital marketing to create growth and revenue.
Cart Abandonment Rate
This is the percentage of sessions that end with items in the shopping cart, but no purchases. To really dig into this, consider that the checkout process is actually made of several micro-processes. Something can be happening in any one of these that are leading to cart abandonment. For example, there’s the process of reviewing the cart, receiving the total along with taxes, entering or selecting payment information, etc. Look for the sub-processes where the most abandonment is happening. Then focus on refining those.
Subscription Growth
Mid funnel customers are perfect targets for email lists. If you can earn them as subscribers, you can reach out to them with promotional offers, specials, and informative content. Throw in an incentive like a discount, and a middle funnel customer can be moved towards conversion quickly.
Michael Davis is on the marketing team at Studicus. He says, “On the other hand, if your subscription list isn’t growing that’s a real program. Something is stopping potential customers from wanting to engage with you on a regular basis. It might be time to reconsider your messaging, or reach out with a better incentive to subscribe.”
Bottom of Funnel Metrics That Matter to You
Building customer loyalty, acquisition, and conversions are key to your success. That’s why you should be tracking these bottom of funnel metrics.
Cost of Customer Acquisition
Ideally, every marketing effort results in real people making purchases. Cost of customer acquisition is the amount of money it costs to acquire each of these customers. The most common way to calculate this is to add your sales and marketing expenses. Then, divide that number by the number of customers you’ve acquired in a predetermined period of time.
Eventually, as your understanding of your audience grows as well as your ability to create relevant content, cost of customer acquisition should go down.
Building customer loyalty, acquisition, and conversions are key to your success.
Lifetime Value
Lifetime value (LTV) is the total value of each customer over their lifetime. In most cases, this is calculated as an average, rather than a specific number for each customer. To understand this number you need to know the average order value, the average number of transactions in a given period of time, the average length of customer retention, and the average profit made per transaction. Use lifetime value along with customer acquisition costs for a very informative ratio.
In conclusion, Keep track of these KPIs, in order to gain a full understanding of your digital marketing efforts. Then, use the results to further refine the ways in which you reach out to your audience.
