5 Tips for Generating ROI from Digital Marketing: Measure, Monitor, Improve

Once you have this information, set up a dashboard in Google Analytics or whatever platform you use to monitor key metrics related to business performance. At a minimum, your dashboard should contain:

• visits (sessions)
• time on page
• engagement with each social platform — shares, likes, comments, RT
• page value from multichannel attribution modeling
• AOV (average order value)
• Conversion
• Cart abandonment rate
• loyalty (percentage of visits with 1, 2, 3, … prior visits)
• Page exits from landing pages

In the post-Panda world, content is king.

Translated, that means you need to create valuable content on a consistent basis — at least once a week, according to Hubspot.

Here are some action items to help optimize your content marketing:

• start with a content marketing calendar to keep you on track to produce quality content on schedule. Check out the link to get some great templates to get you started.
• share content across social platforms — Buffer recommends sharing multiple times across each platform and I posted their schedule here along with some other great content marketing advice.
• Monitor the performance of your content and sharing tactics. Then, use metrics to guide creation of better content.
• Use a variety of content types — video, image, text.
• Create content suitable for each stage in the conversion process identified in the graphic above.

Search engine optimization ensures you get the most value for your content and I’m often surprised how few bloggers really understand how to do good SEO or even understand the importance of SEO for reaching their ROI goals. I think that’s because, pre-Panda, it was your developers who controlled SEO, but now it’s your content marketers and others involved in your digital marketing.

Here’s a crash course on SEO:

• Select keywords [actually keyword phrases] that match search terms for your target audience. Use Keyword Planner, a free Google tool within their advertising planform. Look for keywords, you’ll need 20+, that have high search traffic and low competition. There’s no magic formula here, just try to balance out these two criteria.
• Use keywords liberally throughout your site and in your content — just beware of keyword stuffing
• Install, or have your developer install, a good SEO plugin for your blog. I use Yoast’s SEO Plugin, but I’ve also heard good things about All in One SEO Plugin.
• Work to get authentic backlinks to your content. Use the link to get ideas on how to generate backlinks.
• Build engagement on your social networks.
• Rinse and repeat.