While digital marketing has brought many enhancements in how financial advisors can reach and promote their services to potential clients, it brings with it a fair share of detailed (and sometimes confusing) metrics that tell whether a given campaign can be deemed a success.
If looking at a detailed digital marketing analytics report leaves you with more questions than answers, you’re not alone. The best way for financial advisors to learn more about digital marketing metrics is to start with the basics.
At the core of digital marketing metrics is this question: “Who saw my ad and what did they do next?” Where this was nearly impossible to measure accurately in the days before digital, financial advisors can now get that information, and with a whole lot more detail than ever before.
To answer the above question, there are two main metrics to review in any campaign: impressions and clicks. This article will clarify these questions:
- What are impressions?
- How do clicks work versus impressions?
- What does “reach” refer to?
- What is bounce rate?
- What are conversions?
What are impressions?
This is the number of times your ad was shown (sometimes called “served”) to users — and nothing else. Meaning with just this information, you know how many opportunities there were for someone to click on your ad. When analyzing digital marketing metrics, this number can be misleading at first as it can sometimes be confused with clicks or other actions.
But in fact, impressions aren’t an indication of any action taken by the user on your ad. However, this metric is a numbers game. Meaning that it takes a lot of impressions to produce an actual click.
This metric is known as a click-through rate (CTR). In mathematical terms, as well as Google’s definition, CTR is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown: Clicks ÷ impressions = CTR.
Obviously the higher the CTR the better the ad is performing but deciding on what is considered a “good” CTR isn’t crystal clear. This generally depends on many factors, including but not limited to media type, platform, ad spend, and industry.
You may be wondering, “Why should I care about a metric telling me how many people saw my ad and didn’t click?” There are a few reasons, the first of which being that learning the impressions on an ad gives an accurate audience size – so you know if you’re in front of as many people as you originally thought.
This can be especially helpful when purchasing digital advertising with 3rd party websites when a certain number of impressions are guaranteed. Another reason to give impressions their due? Branding.
Consider your own personal online habits. Do you always click on something – even if it may have caught your attention? Perhaps you were busy or got distracted so you didn’t click the first or even 2nd or 3rd times you saw that ad.
But you might click after seeing it the 4th or 5th time. This is simply the digital version of the same concept marketers and advertisers have known for years: that people typically need to see/hear an ad many times before taking any action. In summary, don’t ignore impressions, they’re telling a story that matters to your financial advisor marketing plan.
How do clicks work versus impressions?
As the name implies, this metric tells how many times your ad was clicked during a given campaign. A word of caution about clicks: they, like impressions, can give the wrong idea at first glance. Meaning? Clicks are not conversions.
Yes, a click is one step further than an impression. But it’s not the end goal as is sometimes believed by inexperienced marketers. Once someone gets to your financial advisor website (or the landing page from the ad), they have to stay long enough to decide to take at least one more action, ideally the action you defined as a conversion.
In order to get them to stay, you need to have engaging content and a good overall user experience.
Bonus Terms to Know
Reach
While impressions is the total number of times your ad is displayed, that doesn’t mean the ad was shown to a different person each time. Reach is defined as the number of people who saw your ad in a given time frame.
Without this information to put the impression metrics in perspective, your financial advisor marketing could be missing the mark without you even realizing it. If the number of impressions an ad receives is impressive, but the reach is low, that could be telling you that your audience isn’t as large as originally thought.
Bounce rate
Once you get a visitor to your financial advisor website, what happens within seconds of that click is critical. If that user “bounces” or leaves the site without performing any other action, it results in a higher bounce rate. In digital marketing terms, the lower the bounce rate the better. And search engines like Google like to see lower bounce rates overall when it comes to giving preference in terms of SEO.
Conversions
The number of times a user performed the desired action as a result of your ad. This is what the impressions and clicks can lead to and, of course, is the ultimate goal. But what you consider a conversion may be different from business in other industries, and even other financial advisor websites.
That’s why it’s necessary to take the time to define what a conversion means to your financial advisor firm before embarking on a digital marketing campaign. When set up correctly, conversion metrics can be an invaluable tool for financial advisors who want to know if their digital marketing efforts are paying off.
Believe it or not, there is a seemingly endless number of metrics that can be explored in digital marketing campaigns. And the best news? You don’t have to learn it!
Let the digital marketing professionals do what they do best and hire help to get the most out of your financial digital marketing campaigns.
