How do you know if your financial marketing strategy is working? The same way you find out if an investment strategy is working – by looking at key metrics which indicate performance.
Often, these metrics are called key performance indicators (KPIs) and refer to the “measurable parts” of your marketing plan. They help you to gain an idea of who your marketing is reaching, how the audience is engaging with your campaigns and areas of attention that could be improved.
Below, we’ve outlined 6 metrics which are typically important as metrics, or KPIs, in a financial marketing campaign.
We hope this helps and inspires you. Please contact us if you’d like to discuss your own marketing strategy for your financial firm.
#1 Impressions
If someone sees your online advert (e.g. Google Ad), social media post or other content, this is usually called an “impression”.
Impressions are typically measured in thousands (called “mille” in Google Ads) and this metric can be hugely useful for determining your brand reach. After all, the more impressions you have, the likely more people are seeing your brand.
However, impressions are little use if people merely see your ads and content, but do nothing else. At the very least, you likely want people to click on your link and visit your landing page.
Not only does this help solidify your brand in their memory, it also presents the opportunity to place a “cookie” in their browser – enabling you to run “remarketing” ad campaigns, later (more on this below).
#2 Clicks & CTR
If someone clicks on your advert or website link (e.g. in Google search results), this indicates a degree of interest by the user. It’s often the first step in their customer journey, and gives you the opportunity to add value to them via your content.
Here, it can be helpful to compare impressions against clicks. This helps you determine what percentage of people who see your links go on to click on them. The name for this is “click through rate” (CTR), and the higher the figure, generally, the better.
Of course, you do not want to overspend for clicks if you are running the likes of Google Ads. Indeed, your ad campaigns can quickly run out of control with budget, if not carefully managed. Here, you need to monitor your overall ad spend and cost-per-click (CPC).
For instance, perhaps you want to spend a maximum of £500 per month on Google Ads. Therefore, make sure this is reflected in your campaign settings – and log in periodically to check things are on-track.
For your CPC, you need to be careful not too spend too much money on individual clicks. Some keywords, for instance, can be very expensive; maybe £15 per click or higher, in the financial sector. This will blow through your budget, fast.
#3 Bounce rates
So, people are seeing your content online and clicking on your links. Now what?
At this point, it is a good idea to check how these people are behaving on your landing pages. This is where bounce rate metrics can be very helpful. They indicate what percentage of your visitors go on to look at other pages, after arriving at the first one.
For instance, suppose you are a local financial planner running an SEO campaign. A potential client searches online for pension advice, sees your link and clicks to arrive at your landing page about “pension planning”. After reading the page, they are interested and decide to click on some of your blog posts on the topic – for more information.
This example would not be counted as a “bounce” and suggests that your visitor is engaged. As such, a lower bounce rate is usually (but not always) a sign of positive engagement with your financial marketing.
#4 Session duration
Bounce rates do not always give the full picture about user engagement, however.
For instance, sometimes you might want your visitor to only visit one page. A common example is when you run a Google Ad campaign to drive users to a specific landing page, where you hope they will fill out your contact form.
Commonly, pages like this may not contain links to other pages. Rather, they are self-contained and this usually leads to a high bounce rate in the reporting. As such, how can you tell if a campaign like this is working well?
Session duration is a good metric here. This provides an average “dwell time” for visitors on your page during a specific time period.
Here, the higher the average session duration, the more time your users are spending on the page to consume the content (generally a good thing).
#5 Search engine rankings
How prominent is your website in Google search? The higher your rankings, the more organic traffic you tend to get.
As such, it is helpful to have a metric which shows your search engine position over time, for specific keywords used by your audience. You can gain some insight with a free tool like Google Search Console, but this will only get you so far.
Here, you might need the help of a financial marketing agency. Whilst you can buy SEO software yourself to track your own organic search positions, the price point is often aimed at agencies who are running many campaigns for multiple clients.
#6 Conversion rates
People are seeing your ads/links, clicking on them, browsing through your pages and spending a decent amount of time on your website. So, what’s left for your list of KPIs?
The ultimate metric, at this point, is conversions – i.e. actions taken by your users which indicate a “meaningful engagement”. Here, you can define a range of actions as a conversion in your Google Analytics including:
- PDF guide downloads
- Sign-ups to your client newsletter
- Booking for your event or webinar
- Contact form submissions
- Free trial requests (e.g. for an app or financial software solution you have created)
Naturally, the more conversions the better!