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What every agent should know about marketing metrics

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Marketing metrics are critical for measuring the effectiveness of campaigns, and for real estate agents, they make all the difference in generating new leads and closing deals. For many, understanding these metrics is confusing, especially when sitting in a marketing meeting with colleagues who seem to know exactly what they are talking about. 

Goal conversion refers to the number of times a visitor completes a specific action on your website. This could be anything from filling out a contact form, sending a text message to your company for more information, calling the main phone line, or signing up for your newsletter, for example.

Identifying goal conversions is essential because this helps you track the success of your website and your marketing campaigns. By setting goals and tracking conversions, you can compare your different campaigns and the improvement of new campaigns over time.

Being marketing-metric savvy isn’t as hard as it may appear, and the below metrics are those that move the needle in good measurement and with which you should be familiar. Forget the jargon and hype, and use these terms to get to next-level marketing prowess. 

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who complete the goal you’ve set. To calculate your conversion rate, you divide the total number of conversions by the total number of website visitors.

For instance, if 100 people visit your website and three fill out a web form, and that web form completion is your goal, then your conversion rate is 3 percent. Conversion rate helps you understand how effective your website and marketing campaigns are at converting visitors into leads and customers.

The higher your conversion rate, the better your website and campaigns are performing.

Multitouch attribution

Multitouch attribution is the process of determining which marketing channels or touch points contributed to a conversion. It recognizes that customers often interact with multiple channels before filling out a web form, making a phone call or completing some other goal conversion.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after only viewing one page. A high bounce rate indicates that your website is not engaging or relevant to your target audience. Bounce rate helps you understand how effective your website is at engaging your visitors.

By reducing your bounce rate, you can increase the amount of time visitors spend on your site, which can lead to more leads and conversions.

Cost per acquisition (CPA)

Cost per acquisition is the amount of money you spend to acquire a customer. To calculate CPA, you divide the total cost of your marketing efforts by the number of customers you acquire. CPA indicates the cost-effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

By knowing your CPA, you can determine how much you can afford to spend on marketing to acquire new customers while still maintaining a healthy profit margin.

Cost per lead (CPL)

Cost per lead is the cost of acquiring a lead or potential customer’s information. This could be through a form filled out on your website, a phone call or an email to your business. To calculate CPL, you divide the total cost of your marketing efforts by the number of leads you acquire to understand the effectiveness of your lead generation campaigns. 

Click through rate (CTR)

Click through rate is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it, indicating the effectiveness of your ads. To calculate CTR, you divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions. A high CTR indicates that your ad is resonating with your target audience and is likely to generate leads and conversions.

Cost per click (CPC)

Cost per click is the amount of money you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Different sources of traffic (“clicks”) will have different CPC. Your CPC metric allows you to compare the cost of different traffic sources. Google Adwords will have a different CPC than Bing, for example. 

By understanding these various metrics, agents and brokers can determine which marketing efforts are effective and which are not worth wasting time on. They can then make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategies, increase conversion rates and reduce costs.

Additionally, while some marketing metrics may differ between traditional and internet marketing, the fundamental principles remain the same. By using marketing metrics effectively, agents can stay ahead of the competition in today’s fast-paced digital world.

Eric Bramlett is the owner of Bramlett Residential, a mid-sized real estate brokerage in Austin, Texas. Connect with him on Instagram and LinkedIn.