Discover why vanity metrics are harming your results, how changes to third-party cookies will impact your marketing, and why advanced tech will transform your business.
Why vanity metrics are harming results
In a recent Forbes article, Dr. Augustine Fou discussed what happened when a number of big-name brands and small businesses alike turned off their digital advertising. According to Fou, there were no changes to the bottom line. While the number of clicks, impressions, and website visitors plummeted, conversion-rates and sales stayed exactly the same. Similarly, his research found that while advertising reach is high, the quality and content of the sites were often not up to scratch.
Of course, no two businesses are the same — and what works for one company may not work for another. However, due to the events of 2020 and our industry pivot to an entirely digital strategy, it has never been more important to assess where you’re seeing ROI. We’ve proven our ability to be agile: so let’s pivot to what works, and stop investing budget in tactics that don’t.
This doesn’t mean marketers should say goodbye to digital advertising entirely. In fact, it should still form a critical part of your strategy — especially since global spending is predicted to reach almost $4 billion this year, according to eMarketer. Instead, it poses an opportunity to make smarter spending decisions, outline the metrics that matter to your business outcomes, and conduct experiments to see what works for you.
“You have to generate revenue as efficiently as possible. And to do that, you must create a data-driven sales culture. Data trumps intuition.” – Dave Elkington, CEO and Founder of InsideSales.com
Vanity metrics vs. business outcomes
Whether this is email open-rates, click-throughs, social media engagements, or even audience size. These measurements provide a helpful overview of how engaged your audience is, whether you’re sharing the right content, and will even help you make pipeline predictions. But, it’s the metrics that affect the bottom line that are most important.
Consider the following when it comes to making digital ad decisions:
- Number of leads generated
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to sales-ready opportunities
- Sales-ready opportunities to customers
- Cost Per Lead (CPL)
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Website visitor automation: transforming digital success
A staggering 80% of marketers report their lead generation efforts are only slightly or somewhat effective, according to BrightTalk.
As 42% of B2B marketing professionals say a lack of quality data is the reason for this. So, how can marketers ensure their digital advertising efforts are generating leads — and that those leads are going to convert? Enter website visitor automation: the ultimate solution to maximizing ROI from your digital spend.
Website visitor automation takes website visitor tracking features to the next level, combining automation and integration to deliver results in an instant.
Web Insights: the key to revolutionizing digital advertising
Digital advertising drives traffic to your website. But, what happens to that traffic when it gets there? When we consider metrics that relate to business outcomes — leads generated, conversion-rates, CPL — we can quickly see that unless we’re converting digital advertising traffic into leads, it’s hard to prove ROI.
According to Rakuten Marketing, even back in 2014, buyers were visiting a website as many as 9.5 times before making a purchase. This means there are hundreds — thousands, even — of unconverted visitors leaving your business website before making an inquiry. Website visitor automation eliminates the need for on-site conversion — providing users with the necessary data to place these visitors into their pipelines, ready to be nurtured, reassured, and eventually transformed into customers.
Web Insights owns the largest proprietary database of B2B IP data on a global scale. Using intelligent website visitor automation technology, the software identifies visitors in real-time.
It then matches the visitor to its database and reveals the business’s identity. Users receive the business name, contact details, firmographic data and on-site behavior.
This way, users gain the power to make quicker connections with customers and deliver instant results. Supercharge your CRO strategy, revolutionize your website, amplify results, and keep your sales pipeline topped with new opportunities.
Web Insights cuts out the noise to deliver insight to B2B organizations, precisely where and when it’s required. Our high-end software solution is a world-class business growth enabler, assisting brands to become more efficient and effective, capitalizing on every website opportunity in real-time.
The technology instantly recognizes website visitors and automatically routes them to the relevant person within your business — the ultimate solution for marketers looking to optimize lead generation, embrace automation, and do so without disrupting busy, high-performing enterprise teams. Automated, intelligent lead generation, immediate website visitor insight and seamless integration — every time.
Meet the author
Rachel Dettmer
Content Marketing Manager
Rachel has over seven years of corporate and award-winning agency experience in marketing and content creation across multiple sectors.