We’re in danger of a data overload. Well, at least according to a recent Forrester research report. We may have reached a breaking point. The report states that anywhere from 60% to 73% of data collected isn’t even used to drive strategic decisions in enterprise-level companies.
When there’s a lot of data, it might be hard to look at the metrics that matter. You could get lost in the numbers, and instead turn to vanity metrics— such as social media follows or subscribers—for some semblance of control.
But those don’t keep you competitive in today’s 24/7 digital economy, especially in the long run. Boosting those numbers is worthless if they don’t convert prospects into customers. What will help is focusing on metrics that are more customer-centric that and will give you actionable data and timely user feedback.
Here are five metrics that’ll have you focusing on your customers, along with the marketing tech tools that’ll turn those metrics into actions.
1. Team Collaboration and Management
Metrics to watch: Number of Tasks Created and Completed, Team Workload, Time Spent on Tasks and Projects Compared to Original Plan
- Wrike: Must-have tool for organizing and handling incoming requests, delegating tasks, and tracking work results and progress.
- Slack: Real-time messaging app that allows you to easily create conversations with @mentioning, auto-responses, custom messages etc.
- Widen: Forget about the file mess! Widen helps you find, share, and analyze digital assets.
2. Acquisition Metrics
Metrics to watch: Number of New Acquisitions, Number of New Leads, Market Share, Revenue
- Kissmetrics: Build customer funnels and sort website visitors into groups based on common actions and triggers, so you can understand more about how potential customers are engaging with your content/website.
- Unbounce: Use A/B testing to discover which features, website elements, or marketing messages are most successful when it comes to eliciting a desired action or response from potential customers.
- Marketo: This marketing automation suite helps you analyze and improve performance along the funnel, from emails to landing pages to forms. It ensures you collect the right information from potential customers and automatically plugs them into the appropriate nurture campaigns.
- Google Analytics: Discover which keyword queries lead customers to your site/product.
3. Product Adoption
Metrics to watch: Rate of Adoption, New Product Revenue, Time to Market
- Clicktale: Use heat maps to track visitors’ mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling, and determine which aspects of your site they’re paying the most attention to — and what’s getting overlooked.
- Qualaroo: Ask visitors to answer short, targeted questions to provide insight into how and why they take advantage of certain features, then use that information to improve user experience.
- Userlytics: Analyze your mobile app usability and user experience. See how users interact with your product to identify opportunities to encourage adoption.
4. Competitive Analysis
Metrics to watch: Rate of Acquisition, Growth Rate by Industry, Share of Voice
- SEM Rush: See top organic keywords, keyword rank, and search volume for keywords that are driving organic traffic to your competitors’ websites. Discover opportunities where you can gain valuable ground.
- SimilarWeb: Get an estimate of your competitors’ traffic over the last 6 months across all channels to understand which traffic sources, referral sites, organic and paid keywords, and social channels are giving them the most visitors.
- Google Advanced Search: Find out where your competitors are getting valuable backlinks. Type “Link:” and the domain that you want to investigate to see which third-party websites your competitors are building relationships with, and which can potentially send high-quality referrals to your site.
5. Customer Value
Metrics to watch: Referral Rate, Churn Rate, Retention Rates, Customer Loyalty
- Zendesk: Excellent customer support is the backbone of customer loyalty. Track issues, respond efficiently, and build meaningful relationships with customers.
- Happy Fox: Build knowledge bases and templates to help customers get the most out of your product.
- BigDoor Loyalty Program: Reward customers for things that don’t involve purchases or earning points, like referring friends or sharing content.
Leverage the Power of Marketing Operations to Grow Your Business
Learn how to build your marketing technology stack and fuel your business’s success in our free ebook, 5 Steps to Transforming Marketing Operations for Maximum Growth. Then see how Hootsuite uses Wrike to scale their marketing operations, track resources, and improve visibility.