Tools to Measure Digital Marketing Performance

In the digital age, existing and prospective customers communicate with businesses and brands through multiple channels. Multichannel communication creates opportunities for businesses and startups to generate leads and convert them into customers by implementing many types of digital marketing strategies – email marketing, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and influencer marketing.

But your business cannot boost lead generation and conversion activities only by launching multichannel digital marketing campaigns. You must remember that each digital marketing strategy has its own strengths and weaknesses. Also, the performances of digital marketing campaigns vary from time to time based on a variety of factors. Hence, you need to boost digital marketing performance consistently to achieve preset marketing goals.

In addition to implementing different digital marketing strategies, you must monitor and measure digital marketing performance using the right marketing metrics. You must not use the same set of marketing metrics to measure the performance of different digital marketing campaigns. There are many tools to measure digital marketing performance. Each of these tools measures the performance and success of your digital marketing strategies using multiple metrics.

Some of these tools help you to measure the performance of specific digital marketing strategies, while others come with features to monitor various digital marketing campaigns. That is why; you can identify what is working and what is not working only by using multiple tools to measure digital marketing performance. We make it easier for you to measure digital marketing performance by comparing and evaluating some of these widely used tools.

Comparing 18 Widely Used Tools to Measure Digital Marketing Performance

1) Google Analytics

Digital marketers often prefer the web analytics service provided by Google to popular tools for measuring digital marketing performance. Google Analytics helps digital marketers to track and analyze website traffic using a variety of metrics – users, sessions, session duration, and bounce rate.  You can access real-time website statistics to assess your website’s effectiveness in retaining visitors and the performance of individual marketing channels. Also, you can use Google Analytics to measure digital marketing performance in terms of visitor acquisition and sales conversion.

2) Facebook Audience Insights

While planning social media marketing campaigns, digital marketers prioritize Facebook due to its massive popularity and dominant market share. The social network makes it easier for digital marketers to assess the health of pages, compare the performance of posts, and understand the target audience by providing an online tool – Facebook Audience Insights. Unlike other tools for digital marketing performance measurement, Facebook Audience Insights displays marketing metrics in a simplified format on the dashboard. But you can leverage this online tool to measure the performance of Facebook marketing campaigns using important metrics like page views, new page views, daily active users, like sources, and daily page activities.

3) Google Data Studio             

The online tool launched by Google helps users measure digital marketing performance by converting data into customized reports. You can use Google Data Studio to integrate data collected from diverse digital marketing channels – search ads, social ads, banner ads, and eCommerce ads. Also, you can boost digital marketing performance by gaining actionable insights through data visualization. Google Data Studio allows you to add comments and notes as well as use filters and views. But it supports limited and specific data sources, unlike other widely used tools to measure digital marketing performance.

4) HubSpot

As a cloud-based CMR system, HubSpot comes with features to align marketing and sales activities. In addition to generating and converting leads, HubSpot facilitates digital marketing automation. The premium software helps you to measure digital marketing performance using marketing analytics. You can leverage this feature to measure the performance of SEO campaigns based on search engine ranking on targeted keywords. Likewise, you can measure the performance of social media marketing campaigns based on hashtags, keyword mentions, and brand mentions. At the same time, HubSpot Marketing Analytics helps you to boost digital marketing campaigns by creating detailed views of leads.

5) Buzzsumo

The cloud-based platform is designed with features to facilitate content discovery, content research, and content monitoring. Digital marketers use Buzzsumo to boost the performance of digital marketing campaigns by receiving alerts for competitors, keywords, topics, and brands. You can create customized alerts to monitor the content used in various digital marketing campaigns. While using Buzzsumo, you can evaluate the performance of content published by your business simply by entering the domain name. Also, you can use the tool to track brand mentions across social networks and online platforms.

6) SEMRush

The online visibility management platform helps digital marketers to run SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and content marketing campaigns by providing over 50 tools. You can leverage the appropriate tool provided by SEMRush to measure digital marketing performance as well as spy on competitors. For instance, you can use the social media marketing tool to analyze brand mentions and assess the performance of your content assets. Likewise, you can use content marketing analytics to measure the performance of your content and identify areas of improvement. Hence, you can subscribe to SEMRush to avail of multiple tools to measure digital marketing performance.

7) Ahrefs

The free and premium tools provided by Ahrefs help digital marketers to automate and streamline SEO campaigns. They use SEO software to automate routine activities like keyword research, website audit, competitor analysis, keyword rank monitoring, and content idea generation. You can leverage the features and tools provided by Ahrefs to measure the performance of your SEO campaigns based on data collected by crawling the entire world just like search engines. Ahrefs makes it easier for you to boost SEO campaigns by tracking your website’s search engine ranking and comparing its search performance with competitors.

8) Kissmetrics

The premium analytics tool helps users to understand to measure the effectiveness of their websites and mobile apps. The advanced analytics used by Kissmetrics helps digital marketers measure digital marketing performance based on user behavior. Also, Kissmetrics helps users visualize the full customer journey on computers and mobile devices. You can opt for Kissmetrics to measure the performance of various digital marketing campaigns based on revenue. The actionable insights will help you to identify the digital marketing channels that generate more revenue. Also, you can generate more revenue by finetuning specific digital marketing campaigns.

9) HootSuite

You can use this widely used social media management platform to automate and monitor social media marketing campaigns. HootSuite comes with features and tools to facilitate content publishing, trend monitoring, incoming message response, and organic content promotion. Also, it helps users analyze the performance of digital marketing campaigns across social networks using advanced analytics. The dashboard provided by HootSuite helps you to get a 360⁰ view of multiple social media marketing campaigns from a single location. At the same time, you can generate customized reports to compare the performance of various campaigns based on real-time facts and figures.

10) Cyfe

Cyfe is developed as an online business dashboard application. Digital marketers use Cyfe to access and analyze information about various digital marketing campaigns from a single and unified location. You can subscribe to this premium software to connect and analyze data by creating a customized dashboard. You can set metrics or KPIs for monitoring digital marketing performance and monitor the metrics by reading email alerts sent from the dashboard. Also, you can access and analyze digital marketing data regularly by scheduling automated email reports. Cyfe makes it easier for you to visualize and share these metrics by featuring embedded analytics.

11) MailChimp

Along with facilitating marketing automation, MailChimp helps digital marketers to measure the performance of email marketing campaigns. You can use MailChimp to implement email marketing strategies by sending informative and promotional emails automatically. Also, you can use the tool to measure the performance of email marketing campaigns by understanding who clicked on the emails and where recipients clicked on the emails. The information will help you to boost email marketing campaigns by tailoring the email messages based on important metrics like open rate and click rate.

12) Webtrends Analytics

Webtrends provides analytics for customized web apps, SharePoint and Microsoft Team. Digital marketers leverage Webtrends Analytics to measure digital marketing performance using adoption and engagement metrics. The analytics helps you to evaluate the performance of both applications and content across digital marketing channels by generating customized reports. Also, the actionable insights gained using the analytics help you identify relevant content and finetune the content that does not keep users engaged.

13) Mixpanel

Mixpanel makes it easier for you to measure digital marketing performance by providing three premium solutions – convert, engage, and retain. You can use these online tools to track conversion rates, analyze user engagement, and identify retention drivers. You can generate interactive reports to answer important questions related to your product or service through data visualization. Also, you can align digital marketing strategies to buyers’ journeys by understanding the actions taken by customers before placing orders. You can further create buyer personas by dividing the customers based on the actions taken or not taken by them.

14) Megalytic

Digital marketers these days generate analytics reports using a variety of solutions. Megalytic makes it easier for them to gain actionable insights by simplifying these analytics reports. You can leverage the digital marketing solution provided by Megalytic to generate monthly analytics reports effortlessly. The monthly reports help you to measure digital marketing performance based on various metrics. Also, you can customize the reports to measure and compare the performance of individual digital marketing campaigns like SEO and PPC. Megalytic simplifies digital marketing performance monitoring by updating the analytics reports automatically.

15) Google Alerts

Every digital marketing campaign is driven by content. You cannot boost digital marketing performance without publishing relevant and interesting content regularly. Unlike other tools to measure digital marketing performance, Google Alerts does focus on evaluating marketing campaign results. Instead, the online service launched by Google helps you to find interesting content by sending email alerts. You can refer to the email alerts to boost the performance of various digital marketing campaigns by creating better articles, blogs, and web pages. You have the option to set the number and frequency of automated alerts while creating alerts related to specific topics.

16) Moz Pro

Moz Pro is one of the most popular SEO toolsets. It allows digital marketers to automate routine activities by providing solutions for keyword research, site crawling, rank tracking, and link research. You can use Moz Pro to measure digital marketing performance by generating custom reports. You can customize the reports by choosing from a slew of prebuilt templates. Also, you can use visual aids to identify wins, losses, and opportunities in minutes. At the same time, you can make the information more relevant to your team by adding observations and notes to various charts and graphs.

17) YouTube Analytics

While launching video marketing campaigns, businesses and brands always target YouTube. YouTube makes it easier for digital marketers to measure the performance of their channels and individual videos by providing a free analytics tool. You can access YouTube Analytics after signing in to YouTube Studio.  The analytics tool helps you to measure video marketing performance using important metrics like visits, exposure, and engagement. You can use these metrics to know how many visitors watch the video, how many visitors watched the video till the very end, and how many viewers posted comments or shared the video.

18) Hotjar

Hotjar measures and boosts digital marketing performance by recording user sessions on your website. You can use this commercial tool to observe common user actions – clicking, tapping, scrolling, and cursor moving – simply by watching videos. The videos will help you to identify the technical errors affecting digital marketing performance as well as your website’s user experience. Also, the videos will help you to measure the performance of your landing pages, articles, and blogs based on the amount of time spent by visitors to read the content. Likewise, you can identify the issues that make visitors abandon the website and switch to competitors.

The tools to measure digital marketing performance help you boost lead generation and conversion activities by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of digital marketing campaigns. But you must remember that digital marketing performance measurement tools vary from each other in various categories – design goals, features, marketing metrics, and cost. That is why; your digital marketing strategies must focus on identifying and combining the right tools for measuring digital marketing performance.

This article has been reposted with permission from abhijitpanda.com