The end-of-the-month metrics report: Whether you love it or hate it, there’s no denying that it’s a staple for digital marketers. And anyone involved in the reporting side of the business knows how important it is to show the results of every marketing campaign. Luckily, if you’re using Bitly, there are a few cool metrics that you can dig up for your next report.
Bitly isn’t just a link management platform; it offers a wide range of reporting features to help marketers gauge the performance of their campaigns and make smarter decisions.
Are you curious about what Bitly has to offer? Below, we’ll cover all its link management functions and reporting features for marketers.
Breaking down Bitly’s reporting features
Bitly provides in-depth reporting features for both beginner and experienced users. On the Analytics page, you can build comprehensive link reports including:
- Performance over time
- Visitor location
- Website referrers
- Devices
- Top performing
Users can also choose from six data visualizations to interpret different datasets to better understand user behavior:
- Line
- Table
- Doughnut
- Bar chart
- Scorecard
- Map
Whether you need advanced reporting features or basic click-and-scan performance indicators, Bitly has you covered.
Links
Bitly has built a powerful reputation as a link-shortening tool. With Bitly, users can create branded short links to build brand awareness, promote their products, and drive both online and offline conversions.
Here’s how Bitly provides crucial data for marketing analytics and decision-making.
Click & market trend monitoring
Bitly’s dashboard shows a comprehensive view of sharing and engagement metrics. You can easily see a list of the top Bitly links you’ve shared, along with the clicks for each one.
Not only that, you can see the top content being shared from your site by other users sharing Bitly links. This data can help you analyze your current and past performance and make critical adjustments to your campaigns.
This means you can actually see—and measure—the content that is being engaged with that you may have otherwise overlooked. This is invaluable information when determining the effectiveness of evergreen content, products, or content that’s getting popular organically, among other things.
Geographical data
Bitly links provide invaluable insights about the user behavior of each prospect, no matter their location.
By clicking any of these links, you can drill down further to measure the exact dates of engagement and shares for each individual Bitly link. You can also measure the geographic distribution of the content and the top referring social channels.
Referrals channel tracking
While most marketing analytics tools give you insight into how a specific channel or campaign is performing, you don’t often get a holistic view of every channel and every customer or prospect who’s engaging with your content.
If you use Bitly links across all of your marketing efforts, you can measure the total number of unique clicks across every channel, campaign, and piece of content. That means you can get an exact figure for your total audience size, which can be a valuable metric when measuring something like brand awareness.
Link performance over time
By seeing campaign activity over time, you can determine if your marketing strategy is successful or not.
With Bitly’s extensive analytics suite, you can gauge link performance over time to adjust your campaign for a better return on investment (ROI). For example, let’s say you’re running an ongoing promotional campaign for your online store.
By tracking the performance of your links over time, you can see the effectiveness of your campaign and branded marketing materials. This way, you can adapt your campaign during slow seasons or stand firm during a peak season.
Link data by device
Bitly offers a real-time view of the devices used to scan branded links. For example, if you’re running a mobile campaign specifically for iPhone users on Facebook, you can refine your Bitly Analytics data to see the day iPhone users are most engaged with your Facebook content.
Some customers have used this kind of data to inform the timing and content of mobile marketing campaigns.
One customer wanted to drive users to its app, so they used Bitly Analytics to find out when the brand’s mobile audience was most active and offer push-up notifications accordingly.
QR Codes
Bitly doesn’t just provide link management solutions: Users can access the platform to generate and track Dynamic QR Codes. Here’s how Bitly offers valuable data on scans and user engagement:
Total scans
Based on the plan you choose, Bitly can provide basic or advanced data on the total scans you receive.
By tracking total scans, you can determine if your campaign meets its core objectives and make real-time adjustments.
Scan tracking data
Bitly can provide data on QR Code scans, including scans over time, by location, browser, and operating system. This kind of detailed data can help marketers fine-tune their QR-Code-based campaigns.
Tracking data gives you the bigger picture of how your campaign is performing. You can refine your campaign based on your audience’s browser or location. You can even see if your scans are increasing or decreasing over time.
With this data, marketers can achieve higher ROI and cut down on unnecessary marketing costs.
Link-in-bio
With Bitly Link-in-bio, you can create bio links to promote marketing channels on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok. This is crucial for influencers and content creators who engage in paid sponsorships and affiliate marketing.
Total views data
Bitly makes it possible for marketers to see how many people are scanning their links. By accessing this data, you can find out how popular your links are and adjust your content if you aren’t meeting your campaign goals.
Aggregate link clicks
If you’re running multiple campaigns across different social media platforms, Bitly can provide visibility into your total number of link clicks. This is known as aggregate link clicks.
It’s a useful feature in comparing the popularity of your social media profiles and performing A/B testing.
Views and link activity over time
Tracking the performance of your links over time is essential for tracking ROI. Fortunately, Bitly enables users to track views and link activity over time.
With these insights, you can improve your content strategy and optimize your marketing spend.
View data
Views data refers to any engagement each link receives. Here’s how you can find this data:
- Log into your Bitly account.
- Select Analytics in the left sidebar.
- Optionally, filter your Analytics dashboard by date or by link.
With view data, you can observe user behavior and interpret deeper meanings behind your insights. This type of critical thinking isn’t possible with standard total views data.
For example, view data can help a marketer test the performance of two different short links and see which one has better stats.
Examples of top use cases for Bitly reporting
Bitly’s reporting features are useful in many stages of traditional and digital marketing, including:
Enhancing digital marketing strategies
Digital marketing campaigns rely on accurate reporting and tracking to gain a full view of customer behavior. This way, marketers can make informed decisions to drive awareness and conversions.
Bitly’s reporting data makes it possible to refine your digital marketing campaign and achieve your goals. Specifically, if you’re running a digital marketing campaign, Bitly’s reporting data provides the statistics you need to see which campaigns are getting traction and which need tweaking to achieve your goals.
Content strategy development
Real-time analytics and data can also provide marketers with the ability to develop high-performance content strategies.
For example, affiliate marketers can rely on Bitly to inform their content creation and distribution strategies. Marketers can see which of their content has the most productive short links.
Then, they can learn from high-performing links and adapt their content strategy.
Social media optimization
Bitly is widely used on social media platforms, from Instagram to Facebook. As such, marketers can use Bitly for social media engagement analysis.
For example, Instagram is a notoriously difficult network to measure. Since it’s mobile-first, numbers often get lost in Google Analytics or other web analytics tools. You’re never sure how many people are actually coming in from the network.
To work around this, brands have used Bitly links in their Instagram profiles, in their comment responses, and in their captions. By keeping track of the clicks on this link, these brands are able to track how much traffic comes in from Instagram.
Customer behavior analysis
Customer data helps Bitly users make accurate marketing decisions. By leveraging customer behavior patterns, marketers can understand their target audience and create more engaging content.
For example, if you notice that customers engage with content with media versus content with mostly text, you may choose to incorporate more video content into your marketing strategy.
Geotargeting strategies
Finally, Bitly allows users to track users down to their geographic location. If you’re pursuing hyper-local campaigns, you can track qualified leads down your sales funnel and make sure they’re in your vicinity.
For example, let’s say you’re running a local advertising campaign for your restaurant. With Bitly’s geotargeting feature, you can establish where people are interacting from and build more relevant campaigns to promote your restaurant.
How to get started with Bitly reporting
Bitly offers amazing value to marketers, bloggers, influencers, and content creators. Here is how you can get started:
Set up your Bitly account
Setting up a Bitly account only takes a few minutes, and you can choose to create a free or paid Bitly account (although it’s important to note that the most robust reporting features are only available with premium accounts).
- Sign up for an account.
- Verify your account.
- Start using Bitly’s products.
- That’s it—you’re all set!
Create your first shortened link
You can create a shortened link with just a few steps:
- Log into your Bitly account and select Create new on the left side of the screen. Alternatively, you can tap B from anywhere in the app.
- Choose a bit.ly (free) or custom (premium) domain name.
- Add your back-half and generate your link.
Access and understand your reports
Bitly offers a user-friendly link management platform for both beginners and advanced users. You can navigate this platform to simply check link views or generate reports based on user behavior.
You can find this data on the Analytics page.
Use the data for strategic decisions
Bitly can offer a wealth of other metrics for your monthly reports. From tracking engagement on subway ads or Facebook promotions to seeing how many people interact with a business card or presentation, Bitly users are constantly coming up with new and creative ways to get the intelligence they need to optimize content and the customer experience.
Use the excellence of Bitly’s reporting to power your campaigns
Bitly’s reporting features make it possible for marketers and everyone else to track the performance of their links and QR Codes to make informed decisions, improve ROI, and achieve desired results. Our user-friendly platform is easy enough for beginners to use and dynamic enough for experienced marketing professionals to customize!
If you’re ready to maximize your marketing campaign with Bitly, find your perfect Bitly plan today.
