At Dekaf Digital, we’ve had the opportunity, and pleasure, of working with clients from a variety of industries located as close as in-state to as far away as Japan.

One thing remains constant with all our clients: they’re confused on what digital marketing encompasses, as a whole, and how to measure its success.

Let’s start first by defining digital marketing and then we’ll jump into how to measure it. 

Digital Marketing Defined

Digital marketing, also called online marketing, is the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. This includes: email, social media, SEO, PPC/Google Paid Ads, web-based advertising,  text, and multimedia messages as a marketing channel.

Essentially, if a marketing campaign involves digital communication, it’s digital marketing – whether it’s driving site visits, store traffic, brand awareness or more. It sounds so much more boring than it really is! Digital marketing can be loads of fun – especially if you are geeks like us that live on the data it delivers.

Wondering how much to spend on digital marketing? Here’s the Secret Formula to a Marketing Budget for you.

How to Measure Digital Marketing 

To measure the success of a digital marketing program, or campaign, you have to start with an objective. We often refer to this as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and there are literally dozens that you can use to measure. For the sake of this blog, we’ll look at the Top 10 Digital  Marketing KPIs.

1. Cost Per Lead (CPL)
2. Conversion Rate (CVR)
3. Page Views
4. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
5. Cost Per Action (CPA)
6. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
7. Site Traffic
8. Social Media Engagement
9. Email List Growth
10. Email Open Rate

If you’re thinking “What do these mean when it comes to ROAS (return on ad spend)?” We suggest reading this article we penned about How to Measure ROAS.

Brewing Up Fresh Ideas

Now that you know what digital marketing is and how to measure it, let’s talk about why work with Dekaf Digital to brew up fresh ideas for your company.

To start, we believe in data and we believe it makes the difference. Sure, our team members have an average of 10+ years experience in digital marketing and we’ve delivered stellar results for clients, but how did we do it? Digital marketing done well is an art and a science. 

Let’s be honest, every (successful) company has a “secret sauce”. Ours is our data-backed approach to our work.

Our Data-Backed Approach

Our engagements begin with a Competitive and/or Audience Intelligence Report that identifies what content and networks your industry and competitors are focusing on. We can tap into this to either leverage their audience(s) to your company’s advantage and/or identify blind spots in the industry that we can exploit (in the best way possible).

While we’re collecting all the data, we create a shared view of success and pull in the most relevant KPIs. We know…more data, but we promise the fun is coming! 

Building on the Intelligence Report, shared view of success and identified KPIs, we get into the topping to our secret sauce, kind of like the creamy foam atop a cappuccino!  You love that foam but it’s no good without the espresso, right?

The data is our espresso. The strategies and campaigns we develop from it is the fluffy, delicious foam.

Be it a “Spook My Ride”, “Spin the Wine Bottle” or “Recipes that Beet Your Mom”, we create campaigns that engage, entice and capture your target audience. Once the campaigns for the quarter are finalized, we dive into how to activate them. 

• Should we do a drip campaign?
• What about organic social media?
• Do Google Ads fit in the plan?

We’ve got you covered from A-Z when it comes to digital marketing and you never wonder if it’s working because we started with KPIs and data.