Find the latest marketing metrics and tools a bit puzzling? You’re not alone. Knowing where to focus your efforts, how to measure them, and what tools to invest in can be tricky. But we’re here to guide you with some helpful suggestions so that you can understand what it all means and stay up to speed.
The Importance of Marketing Research Tools and Metrics
Whether you’re running PPC ads, enhancing your website with SEO, or putting all your effort into social media marketing, having the right tools displaying the right metrics is crucial.
In one of our recent posts, we spoke about the extensive benefits of setting SMART marketing objectives to reach company goals. These objectives can be hugely helpful for both short-term and long-term marketing planning. However, many of them are dependent on you having the data and analysis tools needed to create them in the first place. If you have no numerical representation of how you’re performing, it can be very difficult to plan strategically.
To get started with measurement tools, it can be helpful to first identify what metrics are most important to your business and why. This then helps to inform what tools are needed outside of what is recommended as standard.
Key Analytical Marketing Tools for Businesses
For most businesses, there are a handful of key tools that are indispensable when it comes to tracking digital marketing performance. These include:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful platform that tracks and reports website traffic and user behaviour. Use it to understand how users interact with your site, find out which pages perform best, and see where improvements are needed. These are all essential for making data-driven decisions.
Free or Paid? Free, but it depends on whether you need the enterprise-level features found in Google Analytics 360.
Google Ads
Google Ads is Google’s paid advertising platform for creating and running search, display, video (YouTube), shopping, discovery, and app campaigns. It gives you precise audience targeting, flexible bidding and budget controls, built-in conversion tracking, and robust reporting. This means you can scale campaigns, optimise for ROI, and reach customers across Google properties and the wider Display Network.
Free or Paid? Free(ish). You pay for ad spend, not the tool.
SEMrush or AHrefs
These SEO/competitive analysis tools provide insights into keyword rankings, backlinks, and site health. They can help to improve your search visibility, monitor competitors, and fine-tune content strategies for better organic reach.
Free or Paid? Paid with limited free/freemium trials and restricted free accounts. Both offer free limited searches or trial periods. But to access full keyword volumes, site audits, backlink databases, and multi-user projects, you’ll need a paid subscription.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a handy tool that helps to monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results. Use it to find out about indexing issues, discover which queries bring users to your site, and optimise performance for search engines.
Free or Paid? Completely free and essential for indexing, search performance, and URL inspection.
Meta Business Suite
Meta gives you all of your Facebook and Instagram insights in one place. It also allows you to create PPC ads and schedule your social media posts in advance. You can log in to explore follower counts, views, likes, engagements, ad performance, comments, and so much more.
Free or Paid? Depends. Page-level and post-level insights are free. Running ads costs money (you pay for ad spend). Advanced business features (like some API access, Business Manager premium integrations) may be subject to enterprise-level agreements or third-party tools.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform that also offers automation, audience segmentation, and campaign analytics. Use it to build relationships through personalised email campaigns, track performance, and nurture leads effectively.
Free or Paid? Free (with limited features). Paid plans enable higher contact limits, advanced automations, A/B testing, multivariate testing, and priority support. Pricing depends on contact count and feature bundles.
Must-know Metrics to Focus On
When it comes to the data, not all metrics hold equal value. As we mentioned earlier on, certain metrics will be more important to your business than others.
For example, if you’re a hospitality or restaurant business, you’re likely to place more value on the number of conversions (bookings) you receive than, say, a media publisher, who might focus more on engagement metrics like time on page, scroll depth, or repeat visits. Regardless, there are still some fundamental metrics that most businesses will want to keep a close eye on. These include:
Conversion Rate: This tells you how many visitors are completing a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. It’s a direct indicator of how effective your marketing efforts are at driving results.
Where can you find it? Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Business Suite, Mailchimp, and most CRM or e-commerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR measures how often people click on your ads or links compared to how many times they’re shown. A high CTR usually means your messaging is resonating with your audience.
Where can you find it? Google Ads, Meta Business Suite, Mailchimp, and other ad platforms like LinkedIn Ads or Twitter Ads.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): This shows how much you’re spending to gain a new customer. It’s vital for understanding the efficiency of your paid campaigns and keeping your budget in check.
Where can you find it? Google Ads, Meta Business Suite, and most paid media dashboards. You can also calculate it manually using ad spend and conversion data from Google Analytics.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): ROAS helps you to evaluate the profitability of your advertising by comparing revenue generated to the amount spent. It’s one of the clearest ways to measure campaign success.
Where can you find it? Google Ads, Meta Business Suite, and e-commerce platforms with integrated ad tracking (e.g. Shopify, BigCommerce).
Organic Traffic: This refers to visitors who find your site through unpaid search results. Tracking this helps you understand the impact of your SEO efforts and content strategy.
Where can you find it? Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush, AHrefs.
Bounce Rate: Bounce rate reveals how many visitors leave your site after viewing just one page. A high bounce rate might suggest that your landing pages aren’t engaging or relevant enough.
Where can you find it? Google Analytics and other web analytics platforms like Matomo or Adobe Analytics.
Engagement Rate: Especially important for social media, this metric shows how actively your audience is interacting with your content in terms of likes, shares, comments, and saves, all of which count.
Where can you find it? Meta Business Suite (Facebook & Instagram), LinkedIn Analytics, Twitter/X Analytics, TikTok Business Center, and third-party tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social.
Your Digital Marketing Data, Handled By Our Experts
From construction marketing to healthcare, our passionate digital marketing team are highly experienced at handling digital marketing data for businesses of all sizes. We’ll select just the right metrics, set up reliable tracking, and choose tools that fit your budget and growth stage, so you can spend time acting on insight, not wrestling with dashboards.
Curious to know more about how we can help you? Book in a free discovery call to explore your options.