It’s generally acknowledged that electronic media expand our ability to measure the outcomes of our efforts.

These new measurement capabilities may be too much of a good thing, however. All too often, B2B marketers find themselves inundated with meaningless metrics that are not actionable.

So I’d like to pose the following three measurements as a starting point for actionable B2B marketing analytics.

Conversions

It’s probably most important to keep your eye on the outcomes you’re expecting from your site, whether it’s orders, sales leads, downloads, or something entirely different. Establishing goals for your site should be one of the first you do in the planning process, and your primary analytics data collection should be structured to measure your success.

Most importantly, you can use conversion rates to determine which types of content are producing the most conversions and which audience segments you are reaching with your content. And, of course, which pages are not doing as well and which segments are not responding to your message.

That information can drive a continuous improvement process as you experiment with different ways to replicate your successes and correct deficiencies.

Engagement

Most analytics programs can produce insight on the level of engagement users are having with your content. They include average time on site, pages per visit, percentage of new visitors and   bounce rate

Admittedly, none of these measures is perfect, for a variety of reasons. Time on site may result from leaving a page open; pages per visit may reflect a visitor’s frustration or inability to find what they’re looking for; the percentage of new visitors may be high because you are attracting users from outside your target audience; and bounce rate may result because a visitor actually does succeed in getting what they want.

But, because none of these measures is perfect, we should look at all of them in aggregate. As a group, they give us some idea about the visitor’s engagement with the content.

Traffic Segment Growth

Increases in both organic search and direct traffic are straightforward measures in the success of your traffic. Organic search, obviously, reflects the appeal and searchability of the content on your site. And direct traffic is often linked to your overall branding efforts, your attempts to raise awareness about your brand and your products.

Beyond that, you’ll also want to be looking at the paid traffic, both search and marketing traffic, and making sure engagement and conversions are at levels that demonstrate a return on marketing investment.

Those are the measures that have produced the most actionable insights for us at Godfrey. Are there others that you have used effectively on your sites? If so, please respond.