How Do I Measure the Value Of My Traffic?

Monday, 22/09/2014 | 00:01 GMT by Bart Burggraaf
  • Good example of a simple question that turns very complicated, very soon. There are a couple of levels of measurement we can look at.
How Do I Measure the Value Of My Traffic?
FM

Good example of a simple question that turns very complicated, very soon. There are a couple of levels of measurement we can look at, from the most simple to the exceedingly difficult.

  1. Measure nothing
  2. Measure clicks by traffic source
  3. Measure site traffic & behaviour by traffic source
  4. Measure Leads by traffic source
  5. Measure live clients by traffic source
  6. Measure lead and live client quality by traffic source
  7. Measure revenue by traffic source based on last click
  8. Measure revenue by traffic source based on clicks & impressions, and assign value according to the contribution along the conversion path from first impression to last visit.

In this industry, most brokers are somewhere between 4 and 6 with a few exceptions either way. When a broker measures nothing, marketing and sales becomes a black box; we put money in at one end and out comes (by magic!) some revenue on the other end. On the other end, a top tier (or very savvy) broker might be measuring every single interaction that a lead or client has along their journey to conversion and assigns value according to the lift that particular interaction brings. So if for instance this broker knows that among the 4 interactions a now live client has had with the brokers’ communications, the first was what got them interested and the last was what sealed the deal, they might assign more credit for those two touch points.

Practical advice

In between those two ends of the measurement spectrum a broker might just measure clicks that come from each publisher/traffic source and for those brokers in this situation we would really recommend to add Google Analytics to the site, add UTM codes to the URL your advertisement clicks to and ideally to set conversion goals for your demo and live signup confirmation pages, so you know which traffic brings you conversions. In Google Analytics you can then also see what those users are doing on your site, how much time they spent and other such metrics and use that as a proxy for quality, if you don’t set up goals.

Beyond that a broker might use an adserver such as Doubleclick to measure conversions from banner advertisements, both from users that viewed your ad and later converted and those that actually clicked on it. You can measure this by putting small pieces of code on the page that comes after someone has signed up for an account. Google Adwords and other search engines have similar conversion codes that you can place and this will give you good information on which keywords or ad text (to name but two things) that conversion came from.

To measure the quality of leads and clients and perhaps even revenue by source based on the last recorded click that came to your site, an integration with a CRM system or similar is required. This CRM system would ideally have lead scoring and analytics capabilities through a Marketing Automation platform which is data you can then also use to feed back to your marketing campaigns. If you can get revenue per client in your CRM system, this can then also be used in measuring revenue from your marketing sources.

Lastly, we can take all this data and more and use an Attribution system to figure out the customer journey and attribute value to the sources of traffic that influence the purchase funnel. A few good vendors exists that can do this for you without much pain, but expect a large bill every month for services rendered.

Good example of a simple question that turns very complicated, very soon. There are a couple of levels of measurement we can look at, from the most simple to the exceedingly difficult.

  1. Measure nothing
  2. Measure clicks by traffic source
  3. Measure site traffic & behaviour by traffic source
  4. Measure Leads by traffic source
  5. Measure live clients by traffic source
  6. Measure lead and live client quality by traffic source
  7. Measure revenue by traffic source based on last click
  8. Measure revenue by traffic source based on clicks & impressions, and assign value according to the contribution along the conversion path from first impression to last visit.

In this industry, most brokers are somewhere between 4 and 6 with a few exceptions either way. When a broker measures nothing, marketing and sales becomes a black box; we put money in at one end and out comes (by magic!) some revenue on the other end. On the other end, a top tier (or very savvy) broker might be measuring every single interaction that a lead or client has along their journey to conversion and assigns value according to the lift that particular interaction brings. So if for instance this broker knows that among the 4 interactions a now live client has had with the brokers’ communications, the first was what got them interested and the last was what sealed the deal, they might assign more credit for those two touch points.

Practical advice

In between those two ends of the measurement spectrum a broker might just measure clicks that come from each publisher/traffic source and for those brokers in this situation we would really recommend to add Google Analytics to the site, add UTM codes to the URL your advertisement clicks to and ideally to set conversion goals for your demo and live signup confirmation pages, so you know which traffic brings you conversions. In Google Analytics you can then also see what those users are doing on your site, how much time they spent and other such metrics and use that as a proxy for quality, if you don’t set up goals.

Beyond that a broker might use an adserver such as Doubleclick to measure conversions from banner advertisements, both from users that viewed your ad and later converted and those that actually clicked on it. You can measure this by putting small pieces of code on the page that comes after someone has signed up for an account. Google Adwords and other search engines have similar conversion codes that you can place and this will give you good information on which keywords or ad text (to name but two things) that conversion came from.

To measure the quality of leads and clients and perhaps even revenue by source based on the last recorded click that came to your site, an integration with a CRM system or similar is required. This CRM system would ideally have lead scoring and analytics capabilities through a Marketing Automation platform which is data you can then also use to feed back to your marketing campaigns. If you can get revenue per client in your CRM system, this can then also be used in measuring revenue from your marketing sources.

Lastly, we can take all this data and more and use an Attribution system to figure out the customer journey and attribute value to the sources of traffic that influence the purchase funnel. A few good vendors exists that can do this for you without much pain, but expect a large bill every month for services rendered.

About the Author: Bart Burggraaf
Bart Burggraaf
  • 35 Articles
  • 6 Followers
About the Author: Bart Burggraaf
Bart Burggraaf is Partner at MediaGroup Worldwide, an international financial marketing agency group. Prior to this, he managed global marketing at Citibank’s Margin FX product CitiFX Pro and oversaw the growth of the retail business. Before his time at Citi, he worked at the Copenhagen based online trading company Saxo Bank where he worked on online marketing in the global marketing group. Previous experience includes running a digital marketing agency in the Netherlands and working for a Spain based property developer. Bart holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Amsterdam and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a guest lecturer at various business schools. Partner at MediaGroup Worldwide, an international financial marketing agency group. Prior to this, he managed global marketing at Citibank’s Margin FX product CitiFX Pro and oversaw the growth of the retail business. Before his time at Citi, he worked at the Copenhagen based online trading company Saxo Bank where he worked on online marketing in the global marketing group. Previous experience includes running a digital marketing agency in the Netherlands and working for a Spain based property developer. Bart holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Amsterdam and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a guest lecturer at various business schools.
  • 35 Articles
  • 6 Followers

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