Source/Medium
- Category: Marketing
Source/Medium: A Vital Marketing KPI
In the realm of Marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), understanding the Source/Medium is imperative. It provides vital insights into the origin of your traffic, allowing marketers to assess the effectiveness of their different marketing strategies.
What is Source/Medium?
The Source/Medium KPI refers to the last place a user was before seeing your website's content. 'Source' is the place users are before seeing a page on your website. It could be a search engine (for example, Google) or a domain (example.com). 'Medium' is the general category of the source, such as organic search (organic), cost-per-click paid search (cpc), web referral (referral).
Importance & Implication of Source/Medium
Understanding where your website traffic comes from is a crucial component in refining your marketing strategies. This knowledge allows you to assess what is working and what isn't, providing the opportunity to adjust your approach and maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
The Source/Medium metric can help identify:
- Successful campaigns driving traffic and conversions
- Underperforming campaigns that require optimization
- Potential untapped sources of traffic
Together, with other KPIs such as bounce rate, page value, and sessions, Source/Medium can provide a comprehensive evaluation of your marketing strategies.
How to Track Source/Medium
Source/Medium is not a calculated metric, but rather a dimension that is automatically tracked in Google Analytics or any other web analytics tools. To see this information:
- Log into your Google Analytics account
- Navigate to Acquisition
- Click on All Traffic
- Then click on Source/Medium
Note: In Google Analytics, the Source/Medium information will be displayed like this: google/organic or newsletter/email.
By analyzing the Source/Medium KPI, you can not only refine your existing marketing strategies but also uncover new opportunities to reach your target audience. Remember, the more data you gather and analyze, the more accurately you can optimize your marketing efforts.
