How to blend web analytics and digital marketing analytics to grow better When I started in content marketing in 2013, my digital marketing analytics strategy was refreshing Google Analytics to check if page views were up. Traffic climbing meant we were winning; traffic dropping meant panic mode. Over many B2B SaaS roles, I learned that tracking traffic alone can‘t answer the question every exec asks: "Is our marketing actually working?" I’ve sat in countless meetings where no one had a clear answer. Most teams are stuck in the “more traffic is better” mindset, but traffic only tells part of the story. If you want to know what's really driving results, you need to go beyond the basics. In this post, I'll share the digital marketing analytics I rely on to make smarter decisions, prove impact, and confidently answer that executive question. Bookmark this guide and jump to what you need most. Table of Contents What are digital marketing analytics? Digital Marketing Analytics vs. Web Analytics  What is a digital marketing analysis? How to Use Digital Marketing Analytics Effectively Digital Advertising Analytics Digital marketing analytics help you make sense of what your audience is doing online — and whether those actions are helping your business grow. I think of digital analytics as the thing that helps me read between the lines. It’s one thing to know someone clicked or filled out a form — but I want to know what...

How Many Visitors Should Your Site Get? Whether you’re working with an online business or a brick-and-mortar bolstered by an online presence, one question is destined to come up: how many visitors should your site get? Some tracking software makes it easy to gather metrics, but what does it all mean? A screen of numbers doesn’t magically transform into a successful marketing strategy and more visitors. Understanding and interpreting your site’s analytics (users, sessions, bounce rate, etc.) is the key to building, adjusting, and implementing the proper plan for growth. To understand how many visitors your site should get, you will need to: determine how many visitors are typical to websites in your industry establish a goal based on the variables (industry, size, user experience) of the company create a reasonable plan with actionable steps to execute a successful marketing strategy How many visitors does a website typically get? It depends. With the number of websites available on the web, it would be impossible to narrow this question down to one answer. Fortunately, there are tools and resources to help you make an educated guess. Before diving into monthly website visitors, it could help to understand the breakdown of website traffic. As of 2019, the statistical data platform Statista outlined the distribution of worldwide website traffic by its source. The breakdown is as follows: Direct (55%) Search (29%) Referral (13%) Social (2.5%) Paid Search (0.5%) As you analyze...

A Beginner’s Guide to Web Analytics Views, new visitors, returning visitors — they sound similar but these metrics are not the same. If you don’t know the difference, you could be misinterpreting your website data and making some ill-informed decisions.   We’re going to cover everything you need to know about web analytics so you can truly understand what's what, interpret your website analytics correctly, and make well-informed, data-backed decisions for your website and business. In this post, we’ll cover the following. You can click on any of the jump links to skip to that section: what web analytics is and why it's important web analytics examples web analytics best practices web analytics tools web analytics api There is tons of data you can collect to understand how people interact with your website and identify opportunities for improvement. You can track overall traffic, bounce rate, traffic sources, new and returning visitors, time spent on site, and much more. The amount of data can be overwhelming at first. That’s why it’s important to identify a few key metrics, particularly as you’re getting started. For example, you might start by focusing on bounce rate on a few key pages on your site. If visitors are quickly bouncing from your homepage, then that indicates they’re not finding the information they’re looking for quickly or easily enough. From there, you can identify possible next steps, like redesigning your website navigation. Let’s take a closer...