I’ve covered a lot of core concepts on this blog so far this year – from alignment and differentiation to breakdowns of various digital spaces for small businesses (and just about everything in between).

Digital marketing has a vast ocean of ideas & concepts that can make it feel overwhelming for many small business owners.

While many of the topics covered so far this year touch on more general concepts, today I wanted to drill down even further to explore some of the finer details when it comes to data and measurement in the digital world.

Even with this more granular look at things, I want to maintain a high-level, “10,000 foot view”, to help you understand how some of the pieces fit together.

As with many things online, focusing too closely on any one of these can cause you to lose sight of the whole picture at times, so I believe it’s helpful to step back so you don’t “lose the forest for the trees”, so to speak.

Attribution: What’s At Stake In Digital Analytics

Attribution as a topic can be a very complicated, deep topic that’s deserving of an entire blog post (which I’ll cover in the future), but if you look at the core definition of attribution (stepping outside of the digital world for a moment):

“to explain something by indicating a cause”

This action happened, because that action happened first – to put it crudely.

Understanding which of your actions in the digital world affect actions “downstream” from that action is important for understanding the effectiveness of that initial act, as you can imagine.

Cause (the initial action) and effect (the resulting downstream action).

In marketing, as mentioned above, attribution can get very, very complicated and difficult if you don’t have much data to learn from – something that’s always a challenge for small businesses.

Despite these challenges, it’s important to understand attribution so that you can relate your spending on digital programs (and different platforms) to downstream actions that matter most to your small business: leads, sales and other hard data you can directly measure with more precision (and first-hand).

Before jumping all the way in, I want to stress here that definitions of various metrics (measurements of data) can vary depending on the platform source of the data.

Since each digital marketing platform and surface is a little bit different, the way they measure data can also be a little bit different so keep this in mind as we work through some of the basic/fundamentals.

I’ll add as well, these aren’t the only metrics in the wild — some are much more complex than others – but the metrics below should get you started as you explore your data.

1. Impressions – think “views & influence” – being “seen” on a platform or app

Looking at the formal definition of impression, it gives the essence of what it means in the digital world:

“A difference made by the presence of someone or something”

(If you’ve followed along closely, you know how much I love differences or deltas).

From a digital perspective, an impression means that you were present in the moment that a user was looking in that app or platform.

Again, how impressions are measured can be quite different depending on the platform (some consider impressions as your content or listing was served, but not necessarily seen), but the important bit here is that your small business profile or content was in view of users of that platform.

Many platforms will give you additional dimensions that can tell you details about the impression moment that can be helpful: where the user was, when the impression took place, what activity the user performed that resulted in the impression (and so on).

Why impressions are important: your small business has to be visible in important moments online for the rest of the actions below to take place. Impressions are a way of measuring how visible you were in those moments. “Leaving a good impression”, quite literally.

2. Clicks (Or Taps) – think “seen, then selected or chosen” on a platform or app during an impression (engagement)

After being “seen” through an impression on a particular platform, a user can choose to take action (through a “click” or “tap”) on your small business digital asset in that impression moment (viewing your content, business listings, etc.).

This could be a link to your website, a “call-to-action” (CTA) for a message, text or call, a “Like” or “Share” (Facebook), a comment, a “save for later”, or some other clickable (or tap enabled) item on your digital content, posts or other digital asset.

They saw you (impression), then desired to learn more about you or wanted to take further action (click or tap).

Why clicks and taps are important: it’s an important way of measuring interest in the content or other digital assets your small business are visible for (through an impression). If users are more interested, the more clicks and taps you may receive – a relative measure of engagement.

3. Visits – users that go to your website to learn more about you and your content

Either through a click, tap or by going there directly, a “visit” is when a user comes to your website and stays long enough to view the content on your page or take further action (more on that below).

As with other metrics above a “visit” can be a little different depending on which analytics platform you use, but it’s essentially a form of measuring how many individual users “went to see” your website.

Why visits are important: often you will be able to track the “source” (one of many dimensions from a visit) of where that visitor came from, allowing you to see which platforms, apps and other other off-site activities are most effective at bringing (the right) folks to your website.

For example, you may measure how many visits you received from social media, from search engines, from other websites, from an email campaign or direct visits.

If you’re investing activity on different platforms, you can get even more granular with your measurements ( visits from Facebook or Google, for example ).

4. Conversions – think “actions” taken on your website during a visit

During a website visit, a user may change from just a passive “viewer” to an active, potential customer by taking further action on your website – something known as a “conversion”.

This action could be a click or tap on a call or email link, a website form entry or some other action you have on your website.

Why conversions are important: while visits are a good way of telling how effective you are at getting users to your website, conversions are a way to indicate how effective your website is at connecting with them and encouraging them to reach out to you.

Metric Flow

As you work your way down the list above, you can see how you can chart different paths folks can take through various digital layers to eventually become a customer.

For example:

1. They see a post on Facebook (Impression)

2. They engage with that post (Click or Tap)

3. They visit your website (Visits)

4. They fill out a contact form on your website (Conversion)

Impression -> Clicks (or Taps) -> Visits -> Conversions

Visibility -> Engagement -> Visitors -> Leads

This is only one particular path (and somewhat linear), keep in mind – there are many, many potential paths they can take to reaching out to you.

Attribution Can Be “Fuzzy”

This is where attribution gets tricky or “fuzzy” (as mentioned above)

For instance: after seeing a Facebook post, they may go to a search engine to look you up or research your small business, and come to your website through Google.

OR… they may be researching something on Google (giving you a search engine impression) and look you up on social media to see how active you are before reaching out.

OR… they may see their friends recommend you on a forum website, so they go directly to your website and fill out a contact form.

OR… (and so on).

It’s kind of fun when you break things down and have more data, but ultimately it comes down to which digital activities (impressions and clicks in search, social and other digital channels) are driving improvements to your downstream goals (visits and conversions on your website).

Cause & Effect: The Heartbeat Of Digital Analytics

As mentioned above, the attribution game is one of “cause and effect”.

Attribution allows you to draw lines from your digital marketing activities (cause) down the bottom line goals of your small business (effect).

While it’s not always as simple drawing a straight line, it’s still important to understand which digital activities are having the most impact – and that comes from proper measurement and understanding the basics of digital analytics.