Measuring Digital Campaigns using VQVC

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If you are going to optimise your digital campaigns you need to measure them accurately

How do you measure the effectiveness of your digital campaigns? In this video, Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights talks to Grant LeBoff, founder of the Sticky Marketing Club about tools and key metrics to use for digital campaign tracking monitoring that companies should start to consider. Have a watch to find out all about the best practices in the area of measuring your campaigns.

Or here’s the transcript for the quick version:

Grant Leboff: So Dave, one of the things that business owners, marketing managers, really struggle with, I think, a little bit on digital, is measuring the effectiveness of what they are doing. How would you go about looking at that?

Dave Chaffey: Yeah, that’s right, Grant. It’s a huge challenge. Almost every business I talk to hasn’t really got that nailed yet. The good news is, there are some great tools available. I think every business has got Google Analytics or similar in store. The mistake they make, they don’t always customise them for their business.

So the starting point is to think that when you get a visit to the site, what are the outcomes you’re looking at in terms of people engaging with content? Then the outcomes, such as a lead, a contact, a download, how you’re tracking those. Then to customize Google Analytics so you can not only record those outcomes but the value of them. For example, I was working with a travel business and what they were able to see is that when someone downloaded a brochure, that was worth say three pounds for that download. Once you’ve got that value defined, at that point you can work backwards to see which media and which content is driving those downloads. Then that gives you a way to optimise and improve your ROI.

Grant Leboff: Google Analytics is a tool that I think most people would be familiar with although as you say, some struggle to use it well. What other tools would you advise businesses to start to use alongside Google Analytics?

Dave Chaffey: I’d say probably the biggest weakness in Google Analytics is, although it’s got some social media reports, it doesn’t have good integration with social media reporting. It doesn’t show Facebook, LinkdIn, Twitter, as well as some of the specialist social media tools. I think that’s what I’d recommend looking at. We use Buffer and Hoot Suite at Smart Insights and each has a way of integrating with Google Analytics. You’ve got your Google Analytics campaign tracking parameters and then you can see the type of posts and which social networks they’re from and you can learn what work works best there.

Grant Leboff: What do you think would be the key metrics in terms of social media monitoring that companies should start to consider, to be able to look at the effectiveness of what they’re doing on some of those platforms?

Dave Chaffey: Sure, well I think the metrics for social media are similar to any digital channel that you’re using to drive visits to the site and get outcomes. To help businesses think about those, I’ve got a mnemonic I use in training called VQVC to help marketers review how sophisticated their metrics are. The first V is volume and I think most measure that. The reason I’ve put in the extra letters is so that people realize you’ve got to look at the quality, so conversion into different outcomes and the value as well. You’re able to measure things like goal value per visit or revenue per visit in Google Analytics. Often when I’m consulting or training, I find that people aren’t those value measures, but really until you’re not, you’re not really using Google Analytics at all. Just to round off the picture in VQVC, the final part is the cost. Then you can look at the overall ROI of the value against the investment you’ve made.

Here’s a summary of how the VQVC measures apply to a campaign:

Type of measureWhat it means for a campaign?Type of measures it includes
VolumeIncremental improvement attributable to the campaign in visits to site, mentions in social media or offline channels.> More unique visitors to your website
> Number of mentions of brand or campaign name during the campaign in social media.
> Growth in Facebook Likes or Twitter follows and shares of campaign content assets.
> Backlinks created to your site from other sites during the campaign
QualityAssesses proportion of visitors that interact and convert to lead or sale due to your campaign.> It’s important to track campaign sources like banners, emails and PPC to assess level of conversion
> The volume can be broken out by site type, for example; blog, SMS, mainstream news media and quality (reach).
> Quality of links can be assessed by site home page authority (PageRank), but PageRank of individual posts won’t be updated in time.
> Advanced marketers should assess both last click and first, intermediate clicks as multifunnel channels in Google Analytics as part of attribution modelling
ValueSales and profit value or Revenue per visit or Goal value per visit if campaign tracking in Google Analytics is setup. Lifetime value should also be assessed if this is significant.> Hitting a minimum value per sale or average order value.
> Useful for companies where there is a specific product to instantly buy online.
> ROI from specific campaigns – useful for companies where there isn’t an instant ‘buy now’ on the website.
CostCost effectiveness should be compared to campaign media investment to calculate ROI.> Campaign Return on investment
> Cost per acquisition and cost per sale overall and for media and other campaign costs
> Cost per mention, cost per link.
> Cost per response of clicks from these links that convert to lead or sale.

Smart Insights Expert member resources in our Campaign Planning Toolkit

Download resource – Marketing campaign planning guide

The aim of this guide is to help you review and refresh their existing approach in order to develop a more structured process which integrates the latest digital marketing techniques better.

Access the Marketing campaign planning guide

We have several other blank Word and Excel templates to help structure your campaign plans.

Download resource – Marketing campaign plan template

Unformatted Word document for you to add to with 1 page Quick campaign summary and a more detailed 4-5 page plan.

Access the Marketing campaign plan template

Download resource – Editorial calendar spreadsheet

Excel spreadsheet with planning and operational calendars for managing and integrating content, social media and email marketing.

Access the Editorial calendar spreadsheet

Download resource – Campaign timeline / project plan template and example

This Excel template is aimed at giving you a starting point when putting together a schedule to sequence the content and media for different types of campaigns from new product launch, sales promotion, event or new site launch.

Access the Campaign timeline / project plan template and example

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