If you’ve ever heard anyone talk about marketing, you’ve probably heard the term “results” thrown around like a hot potato. While often used as a buzzword to drive interest, the true meaning of results is the foundation of any good marketing strategy. How can you tell what results actually impact your return on investment? This guide will help you suss out what marketing results really mean for you.

Common Marketing Results Terms

Before we jump into determining which results are important for your veterinary practice, let’s go over some of the basic definitions of some of the most common key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Impressions: This term describes the amount of times your content (both organic and paid) is shown or viewed. It does not measure whether or not a user interacts with the content, however, just that they’ve seen it. Even if one person sees your content five times, it will still count as five separate impressions. The number of impressions your content gets helps you boost brand awareness. If you pay attention to how many impressions each piece of content gets, you can determine if you are doing a good job with your targeting.
• Reach: Reach refers to the amount of people who see your content. Using the same example as above, if one person views your content five times, this will only count as one person reached. If you are not getting a very high reach, you might want to tweak your targeting.
• Search Engine Rankings: Search engines like Google use a lot of different factors to determine which content they will show at the top of a search engine results page (SERP). The higher your content on a SERP, the more likely it is that people will click on it, so it is important to rank well. Factors like keywords, paid advertising, and website optimization can all affect these rankings.
• Website Traffic Rate: Studying the amount of traffic and the kinds of users who are visiting your veterinary website can help you determine if you are reaching your desired targeted audience. 
• Bounce Rate: This percentage tells you how many of your website visitors only looked at one page before exiting your website. If more than half of your visitors are leaving before exploring your website further, it could mean you need to make your website more appealing to your desired audience. 
• Click-Through Rate: Click-through rate (CTR) is an essential KPI when running paid advertising. This statistic tells you how many people who viewed your ad actually clicked on it. If your CTR is high, you are producing relevant content with which people want to interact. 
• Cost Per Click: When you pay for an ad, you are charged every time someone clicks on your ad. The goal with this KPI is to keep the cost per click as low as possible. If you have a low number of people clicking on an ad with a fairly robust budget, you will have a high cost per click. Good location and demographic targeting, relevant content, and strong brand awareness can all help you keep your cost lower. 
• Conversion Rate: Your conversion rate tells you how many people who have visited your website or seen your ad complete desired actions. This can be clicking through to a certain landing page, filling out a contact form, scheduling an appointment, or even calling your practice. Learning about your conversion rate can tell you a lot about the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Which Results Are the Most Important?

Every result can give you valuable insight into how well your marketing efforts are performing, but there are certain ones that are more relevant to specific goals than others. If you are trying to expand your brand awareness, for example, you want to pay attention to things like Reach and Impressions. If you are creating a paid advertising campaign, though, the results associated with cost like Click-Through Rate, Cost Per Click, and even Conversion Rate are going to be very important. As you start to build a database of results, you will have a better understanding of what marketing tactics work well for your practice, which can help you create even more effective campaigns in the future.

At Beyond Indigo Pets, we want our clients to have an understanding of results so we can work together to achieve your goals. Our expert digital marketing strategists create campaigns based on your desired results. Call (877) 244-9322 to partner with us to expand your digital marketing capabilities.