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3 KPI - No more and no less
Data such as "clicks" or "views" are by no means always EXCELLENT INDICATORS OF MEDIA PERFORMANCE (Key Performance Indicator). For example, if a piece of content is a long text (such as a blog post) or even a study, it is important to know how long visitors engaged with that content.
Impressions: Simplicity wins - but reach isn't everything.
How many visitors / fans / viewers etc. do we have - who doesn't want to know that? In times of digital channel diversity, in which even medium-sized companies manage dozens of web and social media channels, one must ask an important counter question. "Why do you actually want to know this?". Because user-based reach data (so-called net reach) cannot be added up. Example: 2000 visitors on the website, 2000 in Facebook, how many is that together? Answer: Something between 2,000 and 4,000, only the technical monitoring industry, i.e. Facebook, Google and the NSA, know more precisely.
It is not possible to work with net ranges across channels, but it is possible to work with gross ranges. You can add them up. 2,000 view contacts/views/impressions here, 2,000 there, makes a total of 4,000. Very simple, but not a sufficient indicator of media performance.
For example, if a piece of content is a longer text (such as a blog post) or even a study, it is important to know how long visitors engaged with that content.
If the page is closed again after only 5 seconds, it can be assumed that they did not read the article. So there was no "engagement", which can be a sign of non-relevant and poorly prepared content. But in the context of paid campaigns, it can also be a sign of click fraud, where machines simulate clicks and views but never interact with the content.
Engagement: the best "proxy" for potential communication impact - why not on websites?
So how do you measure whether an article has engaged its readers well or not? Surprisingly, the usual time-based website metrics do not give us an answer to this question. This is because they only make (metrologically highly problematic) statements about average total visit times of a website or average "dwell times" on individual content pages. Values collected in this way can be compared with each other. Nothing more. And at best, they show tendencies.
For this reason, it is important to change the website measurement. With a few simple steps, analytics systems can determine and record whether content could be read at all during an impression (a visual contact). The measurement criterion: did the impression have a minimum length required to absorb the message? Or, to use Google's term, was it a "true view"? If so, it is likely that the TEXT has been ACTIVELY READ - the content has "engaged" it CAN have its effect. Whether it actually did is another question and another metric.
Conversion: Conversion must be measured - but where to?
Let's assume your company specializes in the manufacture of modern fire-fighting vehicles that are sold worldwide. You have presented the brand new airport fire-fighting vehicle with an operational exercise prepared for all channels in the media.
Of course, you will achieve a lot of traffic (reach) and many engagements, because this topic, especially with spectacular pictures and videos, always finds enough viewers. Only, what do you want with the age group of 12 to 18-year-olds from a rural region? Or with the age group of 65 and older in a small town? You can do without reach and engagement as KPIs in this example. After all, you want a seriously interested B2B audience that professionally has at least one point of connection to your product. With action-oriented communication that wants to trigger immediate actions (clicks), the actions (clicks) must be counted, but only the business-relevant clicks .
The prerequisite for meaningful conversion data is that you have defined and advertised a specific business-relevant target action that can be measured by click.
For example, "Request more information..." or "Sign up for..." . If clicks on this target action were counted, their number is a clear indication of the size of the reached group of prospects and potential buyers.
Thank you for your interest and kind regards
.companion - strategy with data.
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