Wrapping It Up: Addressing Your End-of-Year Digital Marketing

Before you break out the bubbly and jump into the New Year, give your 2017 marketing strategy a final evaluation.

It would be really easy to open a fresh spreadsheet and dive right into a new year’s marketing strategy – all those big ideas and shiny new promotions just waiting to be introduced to the world. But moving forward into 2018 without closely examining what worked (or didn’t) in 2017, would be unwise and irresponsible.

What Data Should You Evaluate?

Measuring your data is paramount to creating a good digital marketing plan. Reflecting on the highs and lows of your 2017 strategy gives you crucial insight into how you should move forward. The Content Marketing Institute suggests the following 6 metrics to track and analyze when looking at your website’s performance.

1. The number of unique visitors to your website
2. The number of individual page views that visitors click on
3. The amount of search engine traffic your website receives
4. The “bounce rate” or the percentage of visitors who visit then promptly leave your website
5. The number of visitors who take action on your site, such as signing up for your newsletter
6. The number of click-throughs from links on other websites

For social media, specifically, Social Media Examiner gives 10 metrics to analyze. (There are analytics tools that can make this process a lot easier like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Google Analytics, etc.)

1. Track your follower growth.
2. Know your optimal times for engagement. In other words, know when your audience is online.
3. Track your engagement – the likes and reactions to your posts.
4. Keep an eye on “mentions” – what your fans are saying and when they tag you in posts.
5. Monitor your audience demographics.
6. Determine the number of people your posts have reached.
7. Review the replies and comments. This will tell you how engaging and relevant your content was.
8. Pay attention to which of your posts were shared and how often.
9. Track your website referral traffic that came from social media.
10. Examine your click rates and retweets.

These are just a few of the key indicators of how your 2017 digital marketing strategy performed. You should also look at other factors like promotions or new products and track the way that profits lined up with marketing. Then use these combined insights to inform your 2018 marketing strategy. Capitalize on what went right and steer clear of what went wrong.

If you need help tackling the best way to move forward with your digital marketing in 2018, reach out to us. We would love to help you move your business into the new year.