Guide to Launching Your Brand Online in 2022: Building a Lasting Presence, Part 3 of 3
This is the third and final stop in our comprehensive guide to bringing your brand—or your innovation—to life online! Your brand is launched. It has a name and an identity. Now what? It’s time to measure! To ensure your brand’s long-term success, you need to track its progress using quantifiable data and by defining KPIs from the very beginning.
When you’re just starting out, it’s easy to dive in headfirst and hope for the best! But setting up tracking tools to collect and compare measurable data at every stage of your project is essential. There are no miracles in marketing—data is a godsend. So, which key metrics should you focus on? And how can you sustain and grow your brand over time?
Define KPIs to Measure Your ROI
Just as essential as your strategy: define a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of your strategy using quantifiable data and make adjustments along the way as needed. These indicators are not set in stone and may change over time.
Now, which performance metrics should you use? It all depends on your project and your strategy. For example, you could track:
SEO KPIs related to your visibility on search engines (tracking the website’s ranking, keyword tracking, number of impressions, organic visits and traffic share, number of visits, load time, pages that generate the most traffic, bounce rate, visit duration, etc.),
reputation KPIs (social signals, recommendations on social media, mentions in print and online media, reviews on websites or your Google My Business page…),
sales-related KPIs (number of sales, best-selling products, average order value…),
other marketing KPIs (traffic breakdown by acquisition channel, measuring the effectiveness of your ad campaigns, tracking conversions…),
…
The KPIs you choose must be meaningful. First, a KPI that isn’t actionable is useless. Second, the results of a KPI should guide your strategy. When defining your KPIs, you should be able to create a list of actions to implement. These metrics allow you to adapt and explore other, more efficient paths.
Other Metrics You Should Know to Drive Your Innovation
Since you're introducing an innovation, there are other KPIs worth incorporating:
the results of the user tests,
the questions people ask you (customer service, social media, email, etc.),
the quality of backlinks (inbound links to your site).
This allows you to identify pain points and obstacles so you can adapt your communication—or… improve your innovation. Because innovation is like SEO: an iterative and creative process.
While it isn’t a KPI per se, the SERP and its ecosystem also provide valuable insights. Have you noticed any “People Also Ask” (PAA) questions appearing for your product? Or perhaps Featured Snippets—a format you could try to rank for?
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Description text goes here. ASSONANCE’s tip for making the most of these questions? Create an FAQ and use the questions you’re asked most often on social media, by email, or over the phone.
To stay in business, stay attuned to the market and your users
It’s a safe bet that your innovation will pique the curiosity of your competitors and that some brands will want a piece of the pie. Monitor the competition using SEO KPIs (ranking tracking, keyword opportunities, etc.) or reputation KPIs. This also lets you know, for example, whether you need to optimize your content. Why? You’ve noticed that your content has dropped in rankings because new competing content is now ranking for the same topic.
Stay attuned to your customers and build relationships with your users through your communication channels. Draw on your brand storytelling and come up with ways to build and retain your community. Value their feedback and involve them in your brand’s development.
