You put so much hard work into your business. Make sure you measure your efforts to know what strategies you should continue to implement, what is not working for your business, and what needs to change. 

Before you analyze your business’s data, make sure your organization has defined goals. The analytics that we encourage you to measure, should be based on your company’s individual goals. Overall, here are the aspects you should measure relative to your business’ objectives. 

Here are a few items your business should track. 

Social Media 

Both qualitative and quantitative metrics can be determined by social media analytics. Quantitative data that companies can analyze from their social media efforts include fans/followers, shares, likes, comments, traffic/visitors, and clicks/conversions. 

While we often refer to certain analytics such as likes and followers as vanity metrics, this data is helpful to gauge the success of an overall goal. For example, if an organization is trying to increase brand awareness, these metrics may be one of many that can help determine if the goal is achieved.   

As with any metrics, qualitative social media data should be considered. Although it cannot be definitively measured, engagement, conversion quality, fan loyalty, insights/research value, word of mouth, brand reputation, and influence all need to be considered when analyzing social media data. 

Website 

An organization’s website is filled with data that is beneficial to businesses when determining success. When analyzing website data, users can determine conversion rate optimization, local SEO, organic search, e-commerce, mobile search, voice search, and more. To learn more about optimizing your Google Analytics, click here. 

Financial 

One of the most important measurements in business is financial analytics. A company’s financial data is so much more than profit. To successfully measure a company’s financial status, organizations should consider market share, revenue, operating cash flow, market cap, brand valuation, referrals, return on investment, and cost savings. 

Advertising ROI 

Historically, the return on investment from traditional advertising such as TV, radio, newspaper, and magazine ads has been hard to track. When analyzing the results from these types of promotions, we encourage you to consider awareness, conversion, and revenue. Ultimately, the best way to measure advertising return is to develop your organization’s consistent measurement of success so that you can compare growth rates over time. 

Isolated Metrics 

We know that your marketing efforts have many moving parts. Don’t forget about measuring the success of one-offs when compiling data. For example, we suggest analyzing direct mail response rates, trade show leads, sales, and inquiries, buzz, and awareness generated from public relations efforts, reach, impressions and awareness garnered from product placement, and so much more. Any marketing tactics that are implemented to support overall goals should be analyzed to measure the effectiveness of the effort relative to your business goals. 

The Intangibles 

Because certain elements are hard to measure, many times important metrics are forgotten. We highly encourage businesses to consider intangible brand aspects as well including wow factor, confidence, likeability, credibility, purchase intent, and more. These can be determined by listening to your audience, encouraging feedback, and welcoming open and honest dialogue, even when it includes criticism. 

Which business analytics have been most beneficial when measuring your company’s success? Let us know in the comments below.