Impressions vs. Reach: What's the deal?

There are a lot of web and social media metrics out there that can tell you about the scope your post or page commanded. Impressions and reach are two of the biggest metrics used to measure how far your post went and how many people saw or were impacted by it. Many marketers use impressions and reach as interchangeable terms, however, that is not the case. Though they measure very similar metrics, the two terms give you slightly different information.

Impressions, simply put, are the number of times your post, ad, etc., is displayed. Reach is defined as the number of people who saw that post.  It may seem like a small detail, but the difference between these two metrics is monumental. If your page or post has 2,000 impressions but a reach of 500, it means that 500 people were shown the same content four times. Here’s why this matters to you.

Many people put more weight in the reach of a post than the impressions but they don’t mean that reach is a better metric. In fact, impressions can be more telling especially if your campaign uses remarketing.  “[Remarketing] allows you to position targeted ads in front of a defined audience that had preciously visited your website-as they browse elsewhere around the internet." In this case you hope for a high number of impressions as people are “followed around” by your brand.

A high number of impressions can also tell you which of your pages or blog posts are the most popular or useful. If people keep coming back to your same page, it must mean that they find something on there interesting or helpful for their work or lives. This is a great way to tell what type of content works and which doesn’t. It could also be a sign that this post is somehow the starting off point for clients like your homepage or a landing page they may have bookmarked.

Another element to examine is how impressions line up with engagement. Impressions are best used in relation to other metrics. For instance, if you create a post that has a high number of impressions, but little engagement, it may not be quality material. Impressions are used to help calculate the engagement rate (impressions/engagement). Post and pages with a low engagement rate are offering little value to those they reached. This is a good sign that the content is getting out into the world, but there is nothing, such as a call to action or question, encouraging viewers to engage with the post or page.

The goal of most campaigns is to keep impressions up. Looking at your website and social metrics for an extended period of time can tell you which months were your best. If you had a large dip in impressions this month, it would behoove you to look and see why. Are you posting less? Was your content shared less? Was your site down for maintenance? Consider impressions as the barometer of metrics. It is the first sign that changes you made have had an impact, either positively or negatively.

Diving into Visitor Characterization

When it comes to website metrics, most people think about page or post views. And while that is definitely an important metric, it tells a very small piece of the picture. It's good to know that people are visiting your site, but what matters more is how they got there, and what they are do while there.

While working at Peak 10, I worked on a large-scale path-to-purchase project. I followed new customer's journey from their initial website visit to signing a contract with our company. Knowing where customers began their interest in your company and the journey they took to work with you can help you see what collateral is valuable and what is not. This can help you focus your efforts into better targeting potential customers that matter as well as prove ROI of marketing efforts, something sales teams and upper management sometimes believe have no value. 

While working on this project, I looked at a few specific web metrics such as sessions, users, and page views. Breaking that down further we have visit duration, referrer, and new vs. returning visitors. With the right software, these metrics are easy to find. Google Analytics can be installed on most websites to tell you these metrics and even more. Here's a break down of what those metrics mean, and why they are important. 

• Sessions- Sessions are essentially the number of visits (new and returning by users. This tells you how many times people come to your website. Knowing this information can help you tell if your website is having the reach that you want.
• Users- Sessions do not equal users. If you’re doing it right, your number of users will be less than sessions because many users will visit more than once.
• Page Views- Page views tells you how many pages are viewed in total by users. This includes pages viewed multiple times even by the same user. This metric can let you know if people are exploring further than their entry page.
• Duration- The amount of a time a person spends on your site has value. If they are only on a page for 30 seconds and you know that page houses at 2 minute video or at least 1 minute or written content, you know you aren’t making a strong impact or relaying relevant or meaningful information.
• Referrer- The referrer tells where or how a user came to your website. Whether it came from an email, Google search, or social media platform. Knowing where people came from can help you see what platforms and tactics are successful and which could use tweaking.
• New vs. Returning Visitors- Knowing your percentage of new vs. returning visitors is crucial. You want to know if your site is “sticky enough” to have people coming back. If not, you may not be providing the value add you thought you were.

While these aren’t all the important visitor characteristic metrics to look at, they are a great start for anyone just beginning their web metrics journey. There are many great tools out there to help you understand your metrics and better use Google Analytics. Happy measuring!