How to Measure the Results of Your Online Marketing Activities | Part 1

One of the best things about engaging in marketing activities on the Internet is the degree to which you can measure your results.

When you place an ad in a newspaper or magazine or do direct mail, you may have a sense of how many people you are potentially reaching. The difference with online marketing analytics is the timeliness, breadth, and depth of information that is readily available – providing truly enlightening insights about prospect behavior and the effectiveness of your marketing tactics.

Analytics is a never-ending process. The market and competition don’t stand still; online marketing tactics must be measured and adjusted to adapt to changing realities.

Some examples of what you can learn through online marketing analytics are:

  • Which marketing communications activities drove people to your website
  • How long people spent looking at specific pages on your website
  • Which social media activities are driving visibility and inbound leads
  • How many people opened an email from you
  • How many people clicked a specific ad or link to reach your website or landing page

There are many other key performance indicators that you can track through online marketing analytics. The key point is that analytics allows for the tracking of results in virtually real-time, which means ongoing adjustments can be made to online activities to improve business results.

The wealth of readily available tools, and the access to real-time data, makes the testing of online activities practical and within reach of any organization. Testing to understand cause and effect increases the probability of achieving positive results.

3 Eye-opening Analytics Tools

  1. Google Analytics: A free tool to track and analyze site traffic data that provides insight about which keywords are generating the most visitors, and how pages on a site are performing.
  2. RavenSEO or Moz: Both of these tools provide complete sets of tools to assist with search engine optimization research.
  3. Crazy Egg: This tool uses heatmap technology to give a visual picture of what visitors are doing on a site’s pages; it shows where visitors move their mice on the page and where they click.

You no longer need to be “flying blind” when it comes to the impact of your marketing activities and investments. Online data collection, reporting, and analysis are readily available to businesses of all sizes and must be part of your day-to-day activities to ensure your marketing investments are driving revenue growth.

In our next blog in this series, we will outline the 3 steps for developing an analytics strategy.


Core Online Marketing provides the experience and skillsets small and mid-sized businesses need to be successful online. We do so through a strategic approach that drives results.

Are you doing everything that you can to be successful online? Download our free self-audit to find out, it only takes fifteen minutes to complete!

Ben Molfetta