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Top Marketing Metrics to Track for Long-Term Success
In today’s competitive landscape, marketers need more than intuition to succeed. Tracking the right marketing metrics is crucial in order to make more informed decisions, optimize campaigns, and drive sustainable growth.
But with so many metrics available, it can be overwhelming to know where to focus.
This guide will break down the top six marketing metrics you should prioritize for long-term success — and how Northbeam can help you track and leverage these insights effectively.
Metric #1: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer over the entire duration of their relationship.
CLV is critical for understanding the long-term profitability of your customers. By focusing on increasing CLV, businesses can improve customer retention, enhance customer experience, and allocate resources more effectively.
To calculate CLV, you’ll need to account for the average purchase value, purchase frequency, and customer lifespan. Platforms like Northbeam simplify this process by analyzing customer data and providing actionable insights to maximize lifetime value.
CLV in action: An e-commerce brand identifies that high-value customers tend to purchase accessory items within three months of their initial purchase. By implementing a targeted email campaign with accessory recommendations, the brand increases repeat purchases and boosts CLV by 15%.
Metric #2: Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
ROAS is a key indicator of campaign performance and efficiency. It helps marketers identify which channels and campaigns deliver the highest returns, ensuring that ad spend is allocated strategically.
To calculate ROAS, divide the revenue generated by an ad campaign by the cost of that campaign. Northbeam’s attribution capabilities provide a clear view of ROAS across channels, enabling you to optimize ad spend in real-time.
ROAS in action: A direct-to-consumer skincare brand identifies that TikTok ads yield a higher ROAS than Google Ads. By reallocating 20% of their budget to TikTok campaigns, they achieve a 25% overall increase in revenue from paid media.
Metric #3: Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)
Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) is the ratio of total revenue to total marketing spend.
MER provides a high-level view of how efficiently your marketing efforts drive revenue. Unlike ROAS, which focuses on individual campaigns, MER gives a holistic perspective, making it particularly useful for evaluating overall marketing performance.
To calculate MER, divide total revenue by total marketing spend. Use tools like Northbeam to monitor this ratio and identify opportunities to optimize your marketing mix.
MER in action: A subscription box company notices that MER decreases during months with high email engagement. They focus on improving email frequency and content quality, boosting overall MER by 10%.
Metric #4: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the cost of acquiring a new customer through marketing and sales efforts.
CAC is essential for assessing the sustainability of your growth strategy. By keeping CAC low relative to CLV, businesses can ensure long-term profitability.
To calculate CAC, divide the total cost of marketing and sales by the number of new customers acquired. Northbeam’s advanced analytics help identify areas where CAC can be reduced, such as optimizing ad campaigns or improving targeting.
CAC in action: A fitness apparel brand finds that ads targeting lookalike audiences on Facebook generate lower CAC than other campaigns. By doubling down on these audiences, the brand reduces CAC by 20% over three months.
Metric #5: Conversion Rate (CVR)
Conversion Rate (CR) is the percentage of users who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
CR is a direct indicator of how well your marketing efforts are turning prospects into customers. Higher conversion rates mean better ROI for your campaigns.
Calculate CR by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors and multiplying by 100. With Northbeam, you can track conversion rates across channels and campaigns to pinpoint areas for improvement.
CR in action: A SaaS company identifies a low CR on its pricing page. Testing a simplified pricing table and adding testimonials increase the conversion rate by 12%.
Metric #6: New vs. Returning Customers
This metric compares the ratio of first-time buyers to repeat customers over a given period.
Understanding the balance between new and returning customers helps businesses optimize acquisition strategies while nurturing loyalty for sustainable growth.
Use tools like Northbeam to segment your audience and monitor the performance of campaigns to acquire new customers versus retaining existing ones.
New vs. Returning Customers in Action: A home decor brand tracks a dip in returning customers through Northbeam. They launch a loyalty program offering discounts on second purchases, increasing the returning customer rate by 25% within a quarter.
Achieve marketing success with these top metrics
Tracking these metrics consistently is key to achieving long-term marketing success. By focusing on metrics like CLV, ROAS, MER, CAC, conversion rates, and new vs. returning customers, businesses can make data-driven decisions that enhance performance and profitability.
Northbeam’s advanced analytics and attribution tools make it easy to track and optimize these metrics, providing a comprehensive view of your marketing performance. Request a demo and discover how Northbeam can empower your business for long-term success.
A Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Attribution
How can you make effective, strategic marketing decisions if you don’t know the impacts of your efforts? This is where marketing attribution comes in.
In today’s hyper-competitive digital landscape, understanding the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is crucial for sustained and scalable growth. Marketing attribution is how you “attribute” sales or conversions to different touchpoints in a customer’s journey.
In this guide, we’ll break down what marketing attribution is, cover its various models, and help you understand how to implement it to improve your marketing strategy.
What is marketing attribution?
As stated above, marketing attribution is the process of evaluating the impact of different marketing efforts across a customer journey. When a customer interacts with your ads and content across multiple channels, attribution models help you determine which of these channels had an impact on an ultimate conversion or sale — and how much impact each one had.
Let’s say a customer discovers your brand through a Google ad. After clicking onto your site, they browse for a while before following your brand on Instagram. You send them a couple of emails that they open but don’t click on. Finally, after seeing a Youtube ad, they make a purchase on your website.
With proper attribution, you can identify which of these touchpoints contributed to the final sale. With this information in hand, you can optimize future campaigns and make sure you keep directing resources towards the efforts that are working.
Understanding which touchpoints are most effective enables you to not only improve your budget allocation and decision-making, but bolster your customer experience as well. Your various touchpoints represent your customer journey, and a strong knowledge of your customer journey helps you customize and personalize your content depending on where a prospect is in the funnel.
Without proper attribution, you might be left guessing when it comes to the most important questions about your marketing strategy: what works, and what doesn’t?
Types of marketing attribution models
At Northbeam, we offer six different attribution models for users to play around with. We divide those attribution models into two categories: Simple Attribution Models and Multi-Touch Attribution Models (MTA).
Simple attribution models
With Simple Attribution Models, all credit is given to a single touchpoint. Simple Attribution Models have historically been the main option for marketers, and you may be used to seeing these legacy models on different platforms.
These models include:
- First Touch Attribution
- Last Touch Attribution
- Last Non-Direct Touch Attribution
First Touch gives credit to the very first interaction a customer has with your marketing or content, while Last Touch gives credit to the very last touch they made before a conversion or sale.
Last Non-Direct Touch also gives credit to the last touchpoint in the user journey — excluding direct search. It is the default model used by most in-platform reporting (Facebook, Google, TikTok, etc.) as well as by Google Analytics.
Multi-touch attribution models (MTA)
With Multi-Touch Attribution Models, credit for a sale or conversion is divided across multiple touchpoints.
On Northbeam, these models include:
- Linear MTA
- Clicks-Only MTA
- Clicks & Views MTA
With Linear MTA, credit is divided equally across all touchpoints on the customer journey. Clicks-Only MTA also divides credit equally between all touchpoints, but it does not include lower-funnel touchpoints or view-through touchpoints, like scrolling past an Instagram ad.
Finally, Clicks & Views MTA combines the Clicks-Only model with Northbeam’s proprietary View-based machine learning model to accurately and effectively account for the impact of view-based touchpoints. With Clicks & Views, you can minimize unattributed traffic and touchpoints and get the most complete picture of what works and what doesn’t.
How to choose the right attribution model
Selecting the right attribution model for your business depends on a variety of factors, including:
- Your sales cycle - if you have a long or complicated sales cycle with multiple touchpoints, an MTA model may be most appropriate. If you have a straightforward and short sales cycle or only one or two channels, consider a simple attribution model.
- Your marketing goals - If you’ve got sales on the mind, an MTA model will give you the fullest scope of your performance. But if you’re not targeting conversions or sales but rather something like brand awareness, keeping an eye on first-click will give you great data on how customers first became aware of your company.
But it’s not enough to select your preferred models. You also need to ensure that the data you’re feeding these models is up to snuff. Perhaps the most common challenge with attribution is data — how do you make all of your different channels play nice with one another when each one wants to take credit for a sale?
Marketing intelligence platforms like Northbeam bring all of your various touchpoints together across platforms and channels to offer robust analytics, consistent data collection, and near-real-time attribution information, when you need it.
To recap:
- Get familiar with marketing attribution and the different types of attribution models
- Use a sophisticated, well-tested tool to bring all of your data points together and give you a full picture of attribution
- Use your accurate and timely attribution data to continuously refine your approach and make the best of each marketing dollar
Now that you’ve gotten the basics down, you may want to deepen your understanding of attribution. Read more: Unlocking the Truth Behind Incremental Performance: Why & How Attribution Models Can Make Or Break Your Business
Announcing Metrics Explorer: Correlation Analysis in Northbeam
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Have you ever run a correlation analysis on your marketing data? Generations of marketers have used this statistical analysis to help them understand the relationships between their spend, revenue, ad and performance over time.
We're thrilled to announce the launch of Metrics Explorer, a powerful new dashboard inside Northbeam that revolutionizes how marketers run correlation analyses. Metrics Explorer empowers you to visualize the direction and intensity of relationships between various marketing metrics over time, providing unprecedented insights into your marketing strategy's effectiveness.
How to Use Metrics Explorer
With Metrics Explorer, you can:
- Understand cross-channel effects (e.g., how Facebook ads impact Amazon revenue)
- Evaluate the strength of relationships between ad spend and key performance indicators
- Uncover unexpected correlations that could inform future marketing strategies
Metrics Explorer is useful at any stage of the marketing process, from ideation to reporting. You can use Metrics Explorer to add statistical rigor throughout your marketing work, increasing trust in both the data and your strategic vision.
Unlock the Power of Correlation
At the heart of Metrics Explorer lies the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, a widely-trusted statistical model that forms the foundation for uncovering meaningful connections in your data. This robust tool allows you to:
- Measure correlations over unlimited, customizable time periods
- Analyze data using various attribution models and lookback windows of your choosing
- Adjust granularity (daily/weekly/monthly) in the data
Metrics Explorer makes it easier than ever to add correlation analysis to your marketing toolbox - and it all runs on Northbeam’s first-party data.
Gain Confidence in Your Marketing Decisions
Metrics Explorer helps you understand how specific ad campaigns, spending flights, or performance trends affect other aspects of your marketing strategy. For instance, you might discover a moderately strong relationship between your Facebook Spend and Google Branded Search Revenue over the last 90 days.
By visualizing these results, Metrics Explorer makes it easier than ever for you to include robust statistical analysis in all your marketing reporting, whether you’re forecasting for the future or analyzing past performance.
Create and save customized views tailored to your specific needs, then export them with ease. Metrics Explorer streamlines your reporting process, allowing you to focus on deriving actionable insights from your data.
Like all Northbeam dashboards, Metrics Explorer harnesses the power of your exclusive first-party data, ensuring that the insights you gain are truly relevant to your business.
Availability and Enterprise Features
Metrics Explorer is now available to all Northbeam users. Enterprise-tier customers enjoy the added benefit of analyzing multiple correlations simultaneously. Contact our sales team to learn more about upgrading to Enterprise.
With Metrics Explorer, you'll gain a deeper understanding of your marketing ecosystem, allowing you to make data-driven decisions with greater confidence than ever before. Start exploring your metrics today and unlock the full potential of your marketing data!
Want to learn more? See our Quick Start Guide, or read our Best Practices Guide.
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