The push for digital marketing through social media and email continues to grow and there is no sign of it slowing down.
Where there are great benefits of digital marketing to small business owners…
- Build brand awareness
- Provide stand-out customer service
- Acquire leads in a low-cost way
- Learn more about your customers
- Increase website traffic and search ranking – Source
There are also definitely downsides to it too:
- Time-consuming
- Extra personnel is usually required
- Some investment may be required
- Your problems are more visible and open to trolls
- Overwhelming to manage and execute
- It’s changing!
After spending so much time on digital marketing, a lot of small business owners wonder if it is even worth it.
Today, we’ve broken down some important metrics for email and social media marketing to help guide you through the overwhelm. By focusing on these key metrics, our hope is that you can confidently create content with a goal worth going after.
Email Marketing
Growing an email base is really important. Technically, none of us own our social media platforms and our content can easily be blocked, hacked, or taken down. Increasing your email base is helpful because you have more control and it is less likely to be unexpectedly taken away.
Question: How to know if your emails are working?
Answer: The open rate and the click-through rate.
The Open Rate
According to studies across all industries, the average open rate for emails is 22.71%. That means that out of the contact list that you send marketing emails to, about 22% of those customers will open the email.
For whatever email marketing platform you use, there should be a dashboard that allows you to see the open rate percentage. A good way to gauge if your emails are successful is to aim for an open rate higher than the industry average.
For more specifics on email open rates across different industries, click here.
The Click-Through Rate
The click-through rate is the percentage of people that clicked on a button that was embedded in your email. The average click-through rate for buttons embedded into emails is about 3%.
In order to track this statistic, you need to have a button for them to click on! You’ve seen them before: “Click here to purchase!” “Sign up for your Free Workbook here!” “Click here to learn more!” “Claim your prize here!”
For more specifics on email click-through rates across different industries, click here.
How to Improve Your Email Marketing Strategy
While there are other statistics to look into, a good place to start is to increase your open rate and your click-through rate. Here are a few tips:
- Use direct, simple subject titles. A lot of people think they need to be super trendy, creative, and clever for subject titles. Instead, just tell them what it is inside the email.
- Use punctuation and emojis sparingly – no need to look like spam.
- Merge the subject lines with their names to avoid going into the spam folder.
- Pay attention to what emails come into your inbox and notice which ones you want to open versus delete.
- Make sure every email has a Call To Action. What do you want them to do? Do you want them to download a free e-book? Do you want them to buy a product? Whatever it is, invite your community to do the thing that you want them to do.
- Increase your use of buttons with Calls To Action. Instead of just one button at the bottom that says “Buy my product now,” include multiple buttons with “Learn more about the product here” and “Click here to save 10% off your first purchase.”
- Tell, don’t sell. Tell them what you want them to do and why they should do it. “Buy this skin cream! It will smooth out texture and quicken your morning routine.”
Social Media Marketing
Social media is never ending and never changing. Even social media experts have to constantly stay in the know on the changing trends and algorithms. So to simplify this process, we broke it into three steps.
- Define Your Social Media Goal
- Know How to Track Your Goal
- Create Content to Reach Your Goal
Define Your Social Media Goal
“If your goal is to grow your Instagram following, then metrics that track engagement (like follows and likes) are probably the most important ones to keep an eye on. If your goal is sales, conversion-related metrics are more relevant (that might include views or click-through rates).” – Source
Social media metrics fall into one of four categories:
- Awareness: the current and potential audience.
- Engagement: how audiences are interacting with your content.
- Conversion: effectiveness of your social engagement.
- Consumer: how active customers think and feel about your brand. – Source
So first, define what your goal for using social media is based on these four categories:
Is it to grow awareness so that more people within a certain demographic know about your brand?
Is it for your audience to ask questions and engage in conversations with you?
Is it to get audience members to convert into paying customers?
Is it to build trust with your current consumers and let them talk about your business for you?
Helpful Tip: Don’t get too stuck here! While all of these options sound amazing, don’t aim for all of them at once. If you are starting from ground zero, start with awareness and build up to the other goals. If you already have a huge following, focus on engagement or conversion.
For inspiration on narrowing down your goals, check out some of our previous posts about finding clarity and alignment in your business, ways to streamline your marketing, and how to establish new goals.
Once you decide on your goal, then we know which metrics we want to track.
Know How to Track Your Goal
While there are a lot of social media metrics that can be tracked, we are going to cover the most helpful ones and define which goal category they help track.
Helpful tip: As you read through these, you might ask, “Where am I supposed to get these numbers and statistics from?” Don’t sweat it. You do not have to personally generate these statistics yourself. #There’sAnAppForThat. Most social media platforms have business metrics integrated, so they actually do it all for you. Go to the platforms settings and there should be a section that lists your analytics. Plus! If the integrated analytics just isn’t enough, you can always use a supplemental analytics app to get all your numbers.
Awareness Metrics
- Reach
- Impressions
- Audience Growth Rate
Engagement Metrics
- Engagement Rate
- Amplification Rate
- Virality Rate
- Video Views
- Video Completion Rate
Conversion Metrics
- Click-Through Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Cost-per-click
- Cost per thousand impressions
Consumer Metrics
- Social Share of Voice
- Social Sentiment
To find the definition and average percentages of each of these metrics, click here.
Create Content to Reach Your Goal
Being able to tell your story as a business owner is an important part of marketing your business.
It helps potential clients know where you came from, where you’re going, and how you can help them.
So, now that we know what your goals are for using social media, you can focus on creating content to fulfill that goal.
Need inspiration for creating content? Click here to read our previous post “How to Tell Your Story As a Business Owner.”
Looking to build your business through creative marketing?
Let Haven help.
Want to know another great way to tell your story as a business owner? Join a coworking space, like Haven Collective!
By joining a coworking space, you will have access to lots of resources that can help you develop your story and keep them coming. Whether it’s picking the brains of other business owners or connecting with a marketing professional, there are tons of opportunities to help you focus on this important aspect of your business.
At Haven, we have curated a diverse, supportive, and successful community of business owners, freelancers, and solopreneurs.
Through Monthly Signature Events, Peer Mastermind Groups, and flexible memberships, connecting with other like-minded people has never been easier at Haven Collective.
If you are looking to build your business AND increase customer engagement, click below to see if Haven Collective is the next step for you!