Metrics that Help You Measure Your Inbound Marketing Success

Inbound marketing offers companies dozens of ways to assess whether or not a campaign is working. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish with your inbound marketing techniques, you could measure success by the number of new addresses gathered, the number of Facebook followers, or the number of downloads of your content.

In the context of effective decision-making, however, companies will benefit most from metrics that demonstrate actual, quantifiable results and business outcomes. Executives and decision-makers can use these metrics to see what’s working and what isn’t, what results are being seen, and what could be done to improve or change the process.

Here are some of the most effective metrics you can measure and track as part of analyzing your inbound marketing success.

Month-by-month growth in organic website traffic and leads: This metric helps you understand how leads and potential customers are finding your website outside of any paid promotional techniques you use. This can include referrals from social media sites, organic search traffic, links from blogs and content, and other methods.

Once you have an idea of how much traffic is occurring through these methods, and how much it is growing every month, track how many of those leads become customers. This metric helps to quantify the results of your content marketing procedures and shows how much this activity is contributing to profit.

Lead generation by content and channel: Track where your leads are coming from, what kind of content is leading them to your site, and the channels they are following to get to your content and site. Determine the most effective driver of traffic and what kind of content sends you the most leads.

Forecasted conversions: Use what you’ve learned about your inbound marketing techniques to start making forecasts for leads in the funnel that get converted. This will require some careful thought and assessment, but accurate forecasts will appeal to the executives in your company that make financial decisions and show the effectiveness of your inbound marketing strategies.

Are you using effective, quantifiable metrics to measure the success of your inbound marketing programs?