Digital Marketing Performance Evaluation Methods

The share of digital marketing from total marketing spending is increasing fast year by year. Still the majority of companies admit that they are missing clear methods on how to evaluate (positive/negative) effects obtained using digital marketing. As this field of digital marketing is relatively new, there are no firm and widely recognized measurement methods resulting in marketing specialists being confused by an overwhelming amount and variety of different digital marketing metrics and large amounts of data. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to list the existing methods which could help marketers to evaluate their digital marketing campaign effectiveness and to discuss these methods’ effectiveness with experts. To achieve this aim, the author defined the following objectives for the paper: 1) to explore which digital marketing campaign effectiveness evaluation methods can be found in realized scientific research so far; 2) to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each method by conducting expert interviews; 3) to determine the practical application opportunities for each identified method; and 4) to draw conclusions and make recommendations for the practical usage of the studied methods. Research methods used were secondary data analysis and expert interviews. The secondary data analysis contained reviews of scientific research results in the field mentioned above. The expert interviews covered in-depth interviews with the main stakeholders – leading online retailers in the Baltics and digital marketing experts. The results show that the conversion evaluation method is most frequently used in theory and in practice as it can be best connected with direct business goals to increase sales. It also highlights that each method has some benefits to be used in specific situations, with specific aims.