Being able to measure the effect from your marketing campaign or knowing when you should change its direction is critical. Nowadays, a lot of businesses don’t know what they should be tracking or how to estimate if certain approaches drive meaningful results and contribute to higher customer lifetime value. Here is why we are listing the 5 most important marketing key performance indicators that you must be tracking in 2021.

1. Website Performance

Your website is probably the most important digital asset for your business. If you are looking to improve it, it is important to understand the different factors that can have an impact on performance and bring conversions. When auditing your website, pay the most attention to:

• Website speed – your website load time has a direct impact on your search engine ranking, conversion rates and social media activity. If your page takes to load more than a few seconds, you are very likely to lose significant number of users before they get to know you and convert. Not sure if your speed is good enough? Check your website performance on the web.dev platform and find out recommendations for improvement. Examples could be reducing the size of images on your pages, code optimization or applying caching tools by your web hosting provider.  
• User experience – it is not always about numbers. Make sure that the design and interface of your website attract and retain users who can easily get what they are looking for. Usually, the bounce rate of your pages or live video recordings of user sessions, such as those made by Hotjar, can help you identify potential UX issues that you can work on. 

2. Google Search Console Statistics

The platform helps you monitor your website performance in SEO and provides a lot of information such as backlink analysis, mobile usability, page speed insights etc. What makes it valuable for marketers is the fact that it monitors data from multiple sources and allows to:

• Analyze traffic on your website – see which queries bring users and track impressions, clicks and ranking on Google search engine results
• Get your content indexed on the search engine – you can always make sure Google has indexed the newest content on your website
• Get alerts in case of issues with your website – Google will notify you in case certain issues with your website are being detected
• Understand how Google reads and ranks your content – you can always check how Google understands and serves information about your business within the Google network

3. Leads and Conversions per Period

Your clicks, website visits and great designs mean nothing if they do not attract leads and end with a conversion – a purchase, a signup, a subscription or something else of value for your business. Of course, you will be able to measure the conversion rate of your performance marketing campaigns on Google Ads, Google Analytics or Facebook ads but the results will be poor if you do not plan your sales & marketing funnel in advance. In other words, this means to prepare content for users from all of the following levels:

• Top of the funnel – these are the users you usually get from social media, paid advertising, organic searches, whitepapers and more. What you want to do is turn them into leads and nurture them and the next stage. It is essential to outline which channels work best for you and attract the highest number of leads.
• Middle of the funnel – here you need to bridge the gap between awareness for a product and a purchase decision by a user. The best content formats for this purpose might be blog posts, case studies, webinars, or product pages. Remember that quantity doesn’t matter much if users are not engaged, and this is why you need to track and measure performance. Make sure that you get positive return on investment from every event organized or piece of content that you prepare.
• Bottom of the funnel – here are the users you need to care most about. Now it is the time to display use cases, testimonials, videos, pricing and to demonstrate your superiority over competitors. At this stage you need to measure your conversion rate to understand whether you really satisfy users’ demand.

4. Social Media Performance

All your target buyers are active social media users. It is not enough just to have your own profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. In addition, you must be interacting with people, publishing engaging content for them, and trying to turn them into brand followers. Insights from interactions by users on social media with your profiles can help you evaluate the quality of your marketing efforts. Pay attention to interactions with your posts, change in number of followers (especially if it is negative), stories and posts previews, and most of all, to comments on your publications or about your brand across networks. A good idea might be to use a social listening tool to help you learn what people talk about you on the Web. 

5. YouTube Performance

It is not a secret that people would rather watch videos than read texts or engage with other visuals about your brand and offerings. Moreover, video formats are the best way to showcase your capabilities, expertise, and solutions. This makes YouTube performance one of the key marketing KPIs you should consider using to measure and improve your digital presence. 

On YouTube you will have the option to see how your latest video performs in comparison with your channel’s average performance or which of your videos are most popular across viewers. YouTube Analytics comes with many more useful reports that will tell you whether you are doing enough to attract and engage users with your video content. 

In Conclusion: 

In case you are keeping an eye on all these marketing KPIs, you are probably getting the most out of your digital and offline marketing efforts and resources. Currently, these metrics can best represent the impact that your marketing campaign has on society and the attitude of the audience towards your brand.  

In the digital era, we are not even questioning the need of tracking and analyzing marketing activities to determine their value for the business. It is nearly pointless to spend even a small budget on a campaign without setting up expectations, KPIs and without measuring the performance. Any positive outcome from such campaigns sounds more like a chance rather than an expected result. 

In this article, we are listing some of the most popular and useful tools that can help you plan and lead your marketing campaigns to have a real measurable impact on your revenue, brand awareness or customer lifetime value. They will not only help you improve and optimize your efforts but will also make planning for business development and positioning a little easier.

SEMrush

One of the most popular marketing SaaS platforms is now being used by over 7 million marketing professionals around the World. It started back in 2008 with only 2 separate tools but in 2021 it has 48 tools grouped in several toolkits: 

• SEO Toolkit consisting of a useful SEO dashboard, keyword research tools, competitive research tools, link building, rank tracking, on-page and technical optimization tools, and more. 
• Advertising Toolkit designed to help you analyze competitors’ performance and better plan your keywords selection, PPC and display campaigns. 
• Social Media Toolkit that will help you prepare your posting plan, track, and analyze your performance across social media channels.
• Content Marketing Toolkit to help you find popular content ideas and prepare SEO friendly content on popular topics.
• Competitive Research Toolkit containing tools to analyze the performance of your competitors, the traffic they get and the result from their marketing efforts.
• Management Toolkit created to help you manage all your campaigns from one place and get reporting on your performance.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs promises to marketers better search engine ranking without being SEO experts. The platform is notable for its large database of resources among which are the help center, the blog and its own learning academy. The main modules of the platform include:

• Site Explorer to research your competitors’ backlinks and SEO rankings
• Keywords Explorer to help you find the right keywords for your content
• Site Audit to scan your website for SEO issues
• Rank Tracker to monitor your performance across various devices 
• Content Explorer that will provide some fresh ideas for trendy topics and content 

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is Neil Patels’ online tool designed to help you get more traffic and improve your SEO. Here is what you can take advantage from by using it:

• Domain Overview – you can get insight into the strategies that are working for others in your market so you can adopt them, improve them, and get an advantage.
• Top SEO Pages Report – discover which of your competitor’s pages are ranking for popular organic keyword phrases and which ones are loved by sites like Facebook. Thus, you will no longer spend time in writing content that no one reads.
• Keywords Suggestions – Ubersuggest provides a free keyword tool to help you think of head terms and long-tail phrases that you can use as keywords.
• Content Ideas – are you aware of the hot topics within your niche? This module will help you identify and work on content pieces that are really appealing to people.
• Backlink Data – with this tool you can see the exact content in your space that people are linking to and which links have the highest impact for you.

Mention

Briefly said, Mention is the tool that will help you monitor the web, listen to your audience, and manage your social media channels. Here are some good ideas how to use it:

• Listen to Your Audience – track and monitor what your audience is talking about across social media.
• Manage Your Brand – it can be very helpful for large brands to identify potential crises and monitor user feedback.
• Competition Analysis – what do they say about your competitors? You will be able to easily track users’ opinion, feedback and their share of voice. 

HubSpot

This is the platform offering one of the highest varieties of tools, not only for marketing activities, but for growing businesses online as a whole. If we dive into HubSpot’s Marketing Hub we will discover a rich set of tools that include all you need to successfully attract and retain your customers on the Web. A brief overview of HubSpot’s marketing features will tell you that the platform can help you:

• Attract Attention Online – just like any of the above mentioned tools, HubSpot will help you prepare the best content pieces by analyzing SEO metrics, competitors’ performance and most popular topics on the Web. You will also find support for managing your social media channels,  engaging your visitors with live chat or hosting and managing files right inside the platform to share them with your visitors. 
• Convert More Leads – HubSpot is going a step further with tools to help you turn more leads into actual buyers. You can try its user-friendly landing page builder, the form builder, the email marketing tool and the lead tracking tool to achieve higher impact of the marketing efforts on your business. 
• Get the Most out of Data – the Marketing Analytics tool gathers sufficient amount of data that will be helpful in planning for strategic marketing activities and campaigns. Another useful feature is the opportunity for integration with Salesforce – one of the most popular CRM tools used across wide range of businesses and industries. 

BuzzSumo 

BuzzSumo is a good alternative to all the tools intended to help you plan and prepare your content. By discovering good ideas, trending topics, and popular keywords the platform provides full insights to support the research process and creation of comprehensive content. A notable feature of BuzzSumo is the option to discover influencers – authors and creators with engaged audience and genuine authority on the Web whom you can cooperate with to increase your brand’s engagement level. Indeed, the tool is able to scan millions of profiles before choosing the right influencers for you. 

Bonus tool: Zapier

Zapier is more than just a marketing tool. In fact, this is an all-in-one automation platform that can save you hours of work per week. It offers integration with over 3,000 applications to optimize the process of customer management, communication and collaboration within teams, online advertising and monitoring of your performance online. 

So, which ones do you choose for your business? No matter how big it is, tracking and improving your results is a must.

Successful online marketing campaigns usually go through several key stages and issues among which are clear goals setting, effective performance tracking and analysis, media planning, proper budgeting and scheduling, and campaign asset production. 

No matter how good your Google Аds, Facebook campaigns, email copies and banners are, there is another step following that is of greater importance for your campaign. Having attracted a lead through your branding and promotion, the place to “close the deal” is actually on your campaign landing page. This is why it needs to be well-created and optimized to bring a pleasant user experience. Fortunately, creating attractive landing pages has recently become much easier, faster and more affordable thanks to some of the most popular landing page builders:

Leadpages

This is one of the most (if not the most) feature-rich tools you can find on the market. With focus on small businesses the platform enables opportunities for easy creation of whole websites, landing pages, popups and many more. What characterizes Leadpages in terms of landing page creation opportunities is the option to use a wide variety of ready-to-go templates but also to rely on more customizable ones. Among the other most prominent features are:

• Built-in conversion guidance that helps you predict the page performance even before publishing allowing for timely adjustments 
• There is no limit on web visitors or leads collected
• Unlimited page publishing which allows you to create dedicated landing pages for different campaigns or traffic sources 
• Incomparable page speed – the creators promise 2.4 seconds faster loading time and 30% better performance score than other leading page builders
• Built-in payment systems to efficiently run your store
• Lead-capture popups and exit intent
• SMS marketing capabilities

The team offers a good resource base to help you get to know the platform and inspire you for the creation of your own web project.

Not sure where to start from? See all landing page templates and choose the best one for your business.

Unbounce

The platform is among the most preferred ones for landing pages and can help you get the maximum out of your PPC efforts. It targets growing industries such as SaaS, E-commerce and Professional Services. What makes it popular is the combination of tools that not only help you design attractive landing pages, but also to measure their performance, increase engagement with popups and stickers, and integrate with other digital marketing tools. Here are some of the most helpful features and options:

• Easy-to-use drag & drop builder
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) that load up to 85% faster than regular mobile pages
• Free images database by Unsplash
• A/B testing options
• Dynamic text replacement – a time-saving feature that allows you to replace landing-page keywords depending on the user’s search query
• Wide range of targeting options – by location, URLs, with cookies, etc. 
• Possible integrations with Constant Contact, MailChimp, Active Campaigns, Zoho and many more. If you choose an email provider or a CRM that is not integrated with Unbounce, you can also have Zapier which will help you connect any other app that works with it.
• Free 14-day trial

Of course, the landing page builder comes together with other common features such as customizable templates, publishing on your own domain, analytics tools and others. A good way to check if Unbounce works for your business might be taking it for an interactive test drive. 

Landingi

However, Unbounce may turn out to be a bit pricy option for startups and small companies. In such cases, a good alternative at better cost might be Landingi that offers almost the same tools and features, A/B/X testing of everything, and integration with almost every SaaS platform you can think of. The large gallery of templates and icons allows you to customize your landing page for nearly any business or niche. Within the website you can also find good examples of pages created with the tool in various industries such as Software & Technology, Advertising & Marketing, Education and many more. 

Landingi also provides a demo of the functionalities and features of the platform with the opportunity to even book a live 1:1 session with a consultant. 

HubSpot Landing Page Builder

Its greatest advantage is the fact that the tool is actually part of something larger, an entire marketing software solution for businesses and marketers and also one of the most popular CRM solutions on the market. For marketing efforts this means not only ability to create attractive landing pages but also to rely on great marketing insights, automation tools and smart approaches towards audience engagement, lead generation and conversion. 

Due to its background the HubSpot landing page tool allows for collecting useful information about users’ demographics and interests to create more effective content and campaigns. In addition to the most common landing page creation features, HubSpot’s one is notable for its good visual editing experience and the options to personalize content for individual users. 

Lander

If affordability is your main concern, Lander might be the landing-page creation tool for you. The platform still offers all the basic features that you need to create a contemporary landing page for your marketing campaigns. They have an efficient drag-and-drop builder that’s perfect for the inexperienced user. On top of that, they have a variety of elements like dynamic text replacement, A/B testing, analytics, CRM or email integration, and more. You can also edit advanced options like timers, countdowns, and direct PayPal integration.

To Conclude:

Which one did you choose for your marketing campaigns? The overview of the most popular landing page creation tools tells us that all of them come with the main functionalities needed to be attractive and engaging for your leads. You will always be able to create a great design, structure, and content for your page even without having technical, coding or UX/UI design skills. But how to make your choice among so many players on the market then? 

Take into account the following factors that are essential for your success:

• Page Speed – compare the performance of pages created with different tools. Even one-second delay in loading might result in people leaving your website and loss of revenue for your business.
• Security – prices can go as low as $0 for a page builder tool if you care for the costs only. However, it is much more important to find a trusted partner and solution since it will be handling your customers and their sensitive data such as personal information, payment details, etc.
• Support – all tools seem to be user-friendly even for inexperienced marketers. However, it is very likely that at some point you will need assistance before or after publishing your page. Here is why you need to make sure that any platform comes with reliable and trusted technical support before getting involved with it. 

The need for website redesign or renewal comes in every two or three years with the changing trends in web design and the increasing demand of users for a better experience, website speed and performance. For businesses, this means constant efforts put in optimization and updates. 

The website renewal process might turn into both a chance to fix certain technical issues and a threat to cause new ones if done in the wrong way. Here is why careful planning of the process is essential for ending up with a website that offers a better look, functionalities, and speed. Here are the most important steps that you should never skip:

Redesign the User Experience

Now is the time to think about the users and plan for a whole new experience for them on your website. Starting from its technical performance to the design of the last call-to-action button everything should look and work great. When thinking about how you can improve your website pay attention to:

• Creating user-friendly design – on average, users spend around 3 seconds on a webpage before deciding whether to continue browsing a website. This means 3 seconds for you to prove that your site is easy to navigate on and the design attracts the attention of your users, clients, partners, or other website visitors. 
• Making the website responsive – this is not a recommendation. This is a must since more than half of the traffic will come from mobile devices. Make sure that you plan the redesign of your website in such a way to make it responsive for any kind of mobile and desktop device. 
• Creating and updating your content for your users – think about who they are and customize your content to respond to the needs of your own clients and partners. Do not try to flood your content with keywords because this will not boost your search engine ranking.

Consider Link Paths and Redirection

It is very likely that after the launch of your website you have added new pages, categories, and menus. Usually, such an update contradicts the initial plan for your website when you were looking at the big picture, but now you need to adapt new content to your old vision. This often leads to improper link paths or even broken links. The time to avoid issues like this one is when you plan for your website renewal. At this point, you can decide to change certain categories or menus of the website which requires a redirection of the old links. 

First of all, think of a link path that responds to your users’ needs and your business offering. An example of customer-oriented site could be the structure leading users in the following way: 

Homepage – Service offering – Additional information – Contact form

Simple, but effective. Try it and you will notice an increase in customer engagement and conversion rates.

The next step is the redirection of old and broken links to the new ones. Usually, you will need it when your page is moved to a new location, you are changing your domain name or you need to remove and delete a page. In such case, you will need to do the so called 301 redirects.

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect leading users and search engines to a new URL address. It should be done in a specific way not to damage your user experience and the way your website is being indexed by search engines. Take a look at the complete 301 Redirects guide by SEMrush to learn when and how to use redirects for your website. 

Don’t Forget the SEO

Think about your SEO before your website renewal and this will save you time and efforts for optimization at a later stage. This is an ongoing process and at this point, you need to consider:

• How keywords have changed
• How competitors use keywords
• How search engine algorithms have changed and what they give most priority to

Have in mind that work on your SEO brings long-term results rather than a quick magical increase in your brand awareness, website visitors and conversions.  

Create a Sitemap 

Having gone through all the previous steps, the time comes to do the actual mapping of your website. You want to help Google navigate and find all new pages, don’t you? Then you need to plan and create a sitemap that will help your most important content get indexed on search engines. Without a sitemap, this will be nearly impossible to do and you will not be able to link your old content right on your updated website. 

It is extremely important sitemaps to be created for new websites, very big websites with many pages and sites with large archives. Let’s take a look at some of the best XML sitemap generator tools recommended by SEMrush that can ease the process for you:

• Slickplan – this is a visual type of sitemap generator tool that is highly customizable and allows users to work on the visual representation of the hierarchy of pages on their website. 
• Mindnode which is actually a mind mapping tool used to plan a project in a visual way. However, its functionalities allow for the visual planning of website sitemaps that could be exported in basic text formats and a PDF version. Mindnode is an app for Apple devices and has a free editor version. 
• XML-Sitemaps is a classic sitemap tool that comes with both free and paid versions with good SEO features included. The tool can also detect some broken links on your website so that you can fix them. XML-Sitemaps has also a mobile app.
• XML Sitemap Generators for WordPress – in the past these were always needed as additional plugins until version 5.5 of WordPress came with the XML sitemap function. However, you can still continue using the popular Google XML Sitemaps, Yoast SEO, or XML Sitemap Generator WordPress plugins to help you generate a sitemap for your website. 

Once you are done it is time to submit your sitemap. Google offers some great guidelines and opportunities to do it as easy as possible – link. 

You Are Not Done

Renewing your website is a never-ending process. Progress in web development, new trends in digital marketing, new business environment and the evolvement of industries will require constant changes updates. With new technologies, users will become more and more demanding and less likely to engage with a website that has a poor design, speed and functionalities. For you, this means keeping an eye on trends and being able to react on time. 

In 2021 we are facing a growing number of companies, even whole industries, adopting digital transformation strategies to optimize production, save costs, or simply to stay in business. Industry 4.0, IoT, and AI are not terms of the future anymore. Investments in Cloud, cyber security, and smart technologies are growing at faster pace than ever to bring maximum efficiency and productivity for tech companies, e-commerce businesses, factories, etc.

What does it mean for cloud and web hosting providers? It definitely means a growing market potential but more furious competition, as well. Aside from the recent-time consolidations, there are huge companies from many years on the market like OVH, Leaseweb, SiteGround, Digital Ocean, which are hard to compete with. And you have the hyperscalers – AWS, Google Cloud. So it is really hard to make a successful hosting/cloud business nowadays. In such an environment any provider must build a strong brand to support the marketing and selling of its service. Here are 6 proven tips that would help:

1. Strengthen Social Media Presence

Users have their own life on the Web far beyond being clients of your business. They spend time on browsing, learning, entertaining, and mainly on visiting social media. In fact, 50.1% of the time spent on mobile devices is done using social media apps, TechJury reports. And if you want to create a brand and build relations with your clients, you must be there. From one side, you should try to “steal” as much as possible from these 50.1 percent. On the other hand, you should be easy to connect with by existing and potential clients. 

Тhe latest statistics show that Facebook continues to be the winning social media platform with more than 2.8 billion active users. 

 The major and must have social media platforms for your business would be:

• Facebook (60% of all social media users are on Facebook)
• LinkedIn (55 job applications submitted per second!)
• Instagram (130 million monthly clicks on commercial posts)
• Twitter (63& of all users are aged between 35-65)

However, before spending time building a brand on any social media platform it is important to determine where our audience is being active.

Nice to have social media platforms:

• Youtube (also known as the second largest search engine after Google)
• Pinterest (⅓ of all users use it to follow companies)
• Snapchat (2nd most popular mobile app)
• TikTok (the average time spent per day on the app is 52 minutes)
• Reddit (50% of the users are from the U.S)

Source – https://tech.co/ 

Remember: Do not focus on selling on social media. People would not go on Instagram to buy web hosting and would hardly purchase cloud solutions “on a good deal” while watching Tik-Tok videos. Try to engage them, instead. Users visit social media mainly to read news, view photos, watch videos, entertain and network. Act as a human and show them your brand personality rather than your offers. Tell them what stands behind great web hosting solutions, present your team members, share your company culture, be fun and informative on industry-related topics and share your expertise. Then you will notice how users engage with your posts, get used to talking to you and when it comes to web hosting you will be the top-of-mind choice.  

Also remember: Although social media may be the best way to engage and communicate with customers, businesses should not fall into the trap of providing support through social media. They can use certain integrations, but the real support should come only through the dedicated ticket system. We would recommend you use social media tracking tools/brand mention monitoring tools.

2. Provide Excellent Customer Support and Quality Communication

It is all about acting professional when it comes to customer support and communication. If someone has chosen you, it means they trust you to be their business partner and to provide flawless hosting solution and professional service. In times when technological advance and equipment are just a temporary advantage, client experience is what will bring you long-term benefits and higher customer lifetime value. 

Remember: 24/7/365 customer support is not an extra anymore, when talking about hosting and cloud providers.Don’t forget that it is crucial to have your contact information well-positioned on your website for users to easily find it. expect support to be available at any time to make sure their websites, systems and web platforms are being taken care of and are online with no interruption. On top of this, you need to make sure that clients could reach up to you by multiple channels and could get expert and qualified care or consulting. Why is this important for your brand? Because happy clients recommend and talk about experience, but so do unhappy ones. And because word-of-mouth is much more powerful than your marketing and branding tools. 

3. Showcase Your Work and Successful Projects 

Clients would not trust promises, but results, instead. Your brand and hosting service will be much more credible if you share some of your past achievements and results. Users will see that you have a good offer on Cloud hosting or Web hosting and that you complement it with additional extras. But they will always doubt if you are ready to respond to their specific needs, business environment, clients or way of work. 

Remember: There is nothing more powerful that could turn a prospect into a lead than a case study or examples of real solutions to similar problems that they have. For example, if you know that many of your clients host e-commerce platforms, you could prepare a case study and target it to other e-commerce businesses as a proof of your experience. Display such examples on your website and share them on all your social media profiles and other channels. Promoting clients’ satisfaction and the quality of your services is crucial for your brand. After all they are your brand ambassadors and you should be able to utilize it and turn it into your favor.  

4. Make Your Website User-Friendly

Your website is the most important channel for your web hosting business. It is most likely that you clients would go there to check your hosting parameters, prices, solutions, features and equipment, and ultimately, to make a purchase. Your task is to ease the process by making your website user-friendly, simple to use and fast to load to provide exceptional customer journey. 

Remember: Focus on usability. Everything should be exactly where users expect it to be. Do not put too much for a fancy design which they do not understand. 

5. Focus on Website Content

If this is somehow important for your SEO, for your users it is crucial. Make sure to provide a good explanation of what you offer and avoid the trap of going too technical. You are speaking to people who want to know what you do, how much it costs and why they should trust you and not your competitors. The faster and easier you answer them, the better for your brand and business. 

Remember: Do not write for search engines. Write for people. Abundance of keywords in your texts would not put you among the top results on Google. Search engines algorithms are intelligent enough to judge if a user is interested in and engaged with what you show them. 

Even though it can be difficult in the beginning, if you would like to get in the game and make an impact for your business, we would recommend researching some of the most popular SEO tools and start using them.

• Google Search Console 
• Ahrefs
• Moz Pro
• Majestic
• SEMrush

SEO is critical to a brand’s web pages. After all, users trust the search engines. Aside from better visibility for your brand, you will be able to better understand the web environment and your competition.

6. Offer Predictable and Easy to Understand Pricing

It is not a one-time sale that you are chasing. Instead, you will be looking for loyal customers with high lifetime value. This goes through being very transparent and predictable on pricing your offerings. People should know why a web hosting plan has a given price and why adding more storage space could cost an additional amount of money. 

Remember: Being loyal and transparent doesn’t mean to stay with the same price for the same services forever. Instead try to upsell your clients with additional features and offerings that bring higher value for their business and end users. 

Do you still think that standing out from the crowd of hosting companies is “rocket science”? We believe it is just the opposite. By implementing these 6 simple steps you will for sure make a big step towards building a sustainable brand that will increase the value of your hosting and cloud solutions.