We live in the age of “Big Data”, an era where brands and retailers have access to reams, piles, and massive heaps of information on how their customers behave. But with all of the data out there, it’s easy to lose sight of the key metrics which actually drive sales. In order to separate the signal from the noise, and find out what consumers respond to, what drives sales, and how to wring every last drop of value from your marketing budget, you need to know precisely what you’re looking for, and where to find it. Today we’ll guide you through the three metrics that should inform your digital marketing strategy.

Click through rate

Traditionally, marketing campaigns have been built on their ability to generate awareness. Agencies and brands have judged success and failure on metrics like unique page views, impressions, bounce rates, and eyeballs. And we suppose that if your goal was to be the brand shoppers grabbed off a crowded shelf of crisp packets or detergent bottles, awareness was a worthy goal.

But with ever more sophisticated customer data available, it’s time to move off the outdated goal of creating a vague sense of awareness. You can now pinpoint the effectiveness of every marketing expenditure in generating sales, and click through rate is an exponentially better tool for understanding the relationship between your ad spend and customer engagement than merely tracking views. It measures the percentage of your audience that sees your content, actually engages with it, and moves on to the next step in the sales funnel.

Your goal in marketing is to generate sales, so why would you judge success based on the awareness you create? In today’s hyper-competitive digital marketplace, you need to know if a campaign actually entices your audience to pull out their wallets. Click through rate is a much better way to gauge whether your ads are generating active engagement, and driving purchases. It can guide you to refine your approach. This metric will help you find campaigns that result in sales, and cut loose noisy, fruitless, and expensive dead ends.

Revenue

You’re probably thinking that you already have detailed stats on your business’ revenue numbers, but bear with us for a moment. If your marketing partners actually open up all of their data to you, it’s possible to accurately track the direct sales generated by all of your individual marketing campaigns. If you’re spending money on a campaign, getting the actual figures which show how much revenue it’s generating is a must. 

Beyond figuring out the return you’re getting from your investment in digital marketing, this information will deepen your awareness of what your customers want, what kind of messages they typically respond to, and what mistakes you’ve been making. Instead of costly surveys, investments in research, and broad and ineffective theorizing, you can ground your insights on customer behaviour in cold hard facts and cold hard cash. By tweaking and tinkering based on the sales you generate, and the ads that yield disappointing results, you can get invaluable marketing insights for free. If you aren’t tracking revenue based on individual campaigns, you’re squandering the most precious data available to you.‍

How much is a customer worth? What is the exact amount, in cold hard cash, that one online sales conversion is worth to your business? These are absolutely necessary questions to ask when you’re drawing up budgets and strategies for marketing. And the answers might surprise you.‍

Kantar recently reported that the average consumer repurchases the average FMCG product 13 times per year. So one new conversion online isn’t generating the value of one bottle of ketchup, but 13 of them. And as the eCommerce FMCG market thrives in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, and the technology driving online sales continues to develop, voice shopping and automatic replenishment for staple products are likely to significantly increase the annual value you’ll squeeze out of every online shopper. If you convince one amateur chef to try a shoppable recipe that contains your products, they’re likely to use it again. But it behooves you to get the data on whether that recipe results in repeat business. You’d better find out if desserts, entrees, or salads move more of your products. If you don’t know what a single conversion is worth, you won’t be able to make sure your adspend is getting the job done.

As shopping trips change to a quick word with Siri or a tap of the screen, becoming a shoppers automatic choice in any part of the FMCG market will yield massive results. Online customer acquisition will soon be crucially important for every FMCG brand and retailer. And knowing exactly what every conversion is worth to your brand will let you make informed decisions about your marketing investments. 

It is incumbent on you to choose marketing partners who let you under the hood, allowing you to see exactly how your sales funnel is operating. If you can’t accurately assess what’s driving sales, you’re almost certainly wasting money chasing vague concepts like awareness while your competitors are micro-targeting their campaigns to generate maximum sales. At Adimo, we generate the data that allows you to calculate exactly how much profit every penny spent is bringing in, and we let all of our clients see detailed information on how their campaigns are working. If you’ve been accepting vague platitudes from your partners, it’s time to book a demo and see what you’ve been missing.