LinkedIn Experiment

Are you on LinkedIn?
Yes? I thought so.
No? I strongly encourage you join.

Why Join?
Beyond the ability to flaunt your successes and connect with colleagues and friends, LinkedIn Answers proves to be a highly useful feedback mechanism. It allows you to tap insight from and initiate relationships with high-level execs. (Another fun tip: you can “introduce” yourself to hot shot professionals via your connections — see “get introduced to a connection” on a desired connection’s profile page.)

Earlier this week, Mike, Paul and I had a little hang-out sesh where we discussed online advertising, interactive marketing, CGM and the ability to quantify and measure success. I recalled hearing about the usefulness of LinkedIn Answers at a work meeting so we decided to give it a shot.

Experiment in Action

I asked: What are the most valuable online marketing metrics/KPI’s (i.e. # of impressions, demographical data, cost per impression,etc.)?

The response? Overwhelming (in a good way). Received 16 very insightful responses in less than twenty-four hours. Here’s a snapshot…

“I think most of our knowledge on what are the most important KPI’s generally are outdated. Many people have said the Cost per Sale or Cost per Lead are the key drivers of interactive media, which I don’t disagree with. But if we are still measuring these metrics with simple clicks and impressions, I think we are generally missing the picture. Relational and interaction data are the most important drivers of interactive marketing. To understand the state of a customer and the relationship the advertiser has with the customer, all at the point of interaction is the holy grail of interactive marketing. And to transpose this understanding web wide (display, search, email, website interaction), we can start to see the internet in a much more robust way.

To be able to understand that a customer is not just represented by a click and impression, but rather by a story which marketers can use to offer the right product at the right time is finally possible on the internet.“ - Brian Murphy, Senior Sales Executive at TruEffect

“As you probably know, the primary benefit of online marketing (as opposed to traditional marketing), is the ability to track ‘conversions’ and identify which campaigns, creative, and channels lead to the most conversions and lowest cost per conversion. By the way, I am using ‘conversion’ as opposed to ’sale’ since a sale in online marketing could be a user simply filling out a form, watching a video, etc.

Therefore, sorry for the long-winded answer, the most valuable online marketing metrics are (1) conversion rate and (2) cost per conversion. Conversion rate allows you to identify the most effective campaign, and cost per conversion is a necessary input to ROI.” – Private answer so I’m withholding his name, however, the company he works for is Barefoot, a BBDO company

“The most valuable online KPIs are totally based on your particular situation. That being said, there’s a huge push in online advertising to measure “engagement.” It’s a nebulous word with lots of definitions, but at the end of the day it means marketers are trying to find metrics that tell them how interested people are in their brands. Time spent, pages viewed and repeat visits are but a few indicators of engagement. I’ve included a link to an article from ClickZ that has lists some metrics one might use to measure it.

Links:

• http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3522616” – Talib Morgan, CEO and Founder of Actuan

“The net is a market place, and it is important for any seller to be in the marketplace in the first place. You want to be where your customers are, and you want to engage them right there with the solution to their information queries. I think therefore that brand engagement should be the key goal of the online marketer, encouraging users to interact with your content is the ultimate deliverable that can actually be tracked and compared across industries.

To this end, I like any stats that show engagement with content – (eg. PV per visitor, time on site – adjusted to weed out anything below about 30 seconds and anything above about 20 minutes.) I think you have done your job if you can get the people you want to stay on your site and learn more about your product/service. I think in this way, you are committing to a strong presence online and also to the founding principals of the net – i.e. to educate and share rather than expressly to make sales – I think these are more sustainable and also realistic goals.” – Philip Cockrell, Manager Usability & SEO at Firstlight ERA

” Bounce rate

CTR (click through rate)

CPI (cost per impression)

Unique visitors

Cost per conversion

These five metrics are arguably the only metrics you will ever have to look at to determine if your site is a success or not. Each one is important for a different reason and each one, when combined with the other four, paints a clear and concise picture as to what is happening with the site.

These metrics answer the following questions:

What is the consumer doing when they reach my site?

Can the consumer reach my site?

and Who is coming to my site?” – Jesse Liebman, Search Engine Marketing Specialist at Engine Works

Good stuff. More to come soon.

xo,
A.rae