Is digital data leading your FDI marketing astray?
In investment promotion, metrics matter. But not all of them matter equally. With analytics dashboards and conversion reports just a click away, it's easy to assume you're reading the signals right—until they lead you in the wrong direction.
From heatmaps to keyword rankings, the numbers can be seductive. But they often mask the bigger picture. Below, we break down six of the most commonly misread metrics in digital marketing for investment promotion, and how to avoid chasing the wrong benchmarks. Those include:
UX heat mapping tools
Total web traffic (instead of target market traffic)
LinkedIn conversion rates
Google conversion rates
Keyword rankings
High dwell times
UX heatmaps: Don’t optimize for the wrong audience
Imagine spending hours analysing how visitors interact with your website, only to realize most of them are from your own jurisdiction and not your ideal audience. Unless you’re running a large, international campaign, your location’s website visitors are likely from within your own region or country, which is not ideal when trying to recruit FDI or talent from abroad. If you optimize based on their behaviour, you risk missing what matters most to global audiences.
Instead, the best solution is to focus on visitation and behaviour from your target markets to create a website experience that truly speaks to international investors. Often times, this audience set is much smaller, where it is more difficult to extrapolate insights from heat mapping technology to guide important decisions.
A trusted partner who knows the audience and their habits in the FDI or talent space can help, as well as valuable reports like Winning Strategies in Investment Promotion Marketing and What Talent Wants.
Total web traffic: Don’t let big numbers fool you
This is related to the first one, where total website visitors can lead you astray. It feels great to see your website traffic numbers climb, but if your goal is to attract international investment, those numbers can be misleading.
As noted, most of your visitors might not be from your target markets at all. That is disappointing and eye-opening, but being courageous enough to dive deeper into insights like these and viewing the real data is the first step toward generating real results.
LinkedIn conversions: Don’t ignore the power of awareness
LinkedIn might not always deliver the highest conversion rates, especially considering the cost per click. But here’s the thing: LinkedIn is where decision-makers spend their time. It is a very important platform for awareness building and lead nurturing.
In the hundreds of advertising campaigns that our team has managed for clients, LinkedIn generates some of the fewest conversions among any core marketing channels. Why do we continue doing it? Because there are more metrics than just conversions to measure, including average time on page and engagement rates.
And let’s not forget that LinkedIn provides valuable demographics data that other platforms can’t match, indicating just how on target (or off) a campaign is. We always advise that clients should think of a broader buyer journey when advertising, making sure to build awareness as part of that.
There is no better channel to build that awareness than on LinkedIn, where you can position your region as an attractive destination for business and talent. The returns may not be immediate, but the long-term benefits are worth it.
Google conversions: Are you attracting the right people?
Most of your website conversions probably come from Google. But are those visitors potential investors? If you’re not looking at the intent behind the search terms and the insights from the audience segments, you could be attracting the wrong crowd. Funny thing – poorly targeted Google campaigns can produce even more conversions than a well-targeted one. The problem is that those conversions end in spam contact forms, not legitimate opportunities.
When focusing on mid- or high-intent keywords on Google, the conversions can come at a decent rate and quite a few of them turn out to be gems. We advising digging deeper into your analytics tools to make sure your content is aligned with the needs and interests of genuine investors, not just curious browsers. Aim small, miss small.
Keyword rankings: Less is usually more
Similar to the counter-intuitive poorly targeted paid search campaigns, poorly curated keywords for SEO can also generate results that look good on the surface. Ranking for hundreds or thousands of keywords sounds impressive, but it is not always a sign of success. If those keywords aren’t relevant to your goals, your website visitors and inquiries might be higher, but the percentage that is actually worthwhile remains quite small.
Instead, we recommend focusing on a smaller set of high-intent keywords that matter to your audience. Will your traffic go down? Maybe. Will your volume of keyword rankings also dip? Most likely.
Are these good things? Absolutely. This way, you’ll attract the right kind of attention and drive meaningful engagement that generates strong results long-term.
Dwell time: When long visits aren’t good news
A high average time on page can seem like a win, but if visitors are spending more than three minutes on your site, they might just be curious—not ready to invest. Arguably worse, they might be interested, but unable to find what they need.
While high average time on page can signal interest, dive deeper to explore if it is also signalling issues with your ad targeting, keyword strategy, or website structure.
You can look at dwell time alongside other metrics like bounce rate and conversion rate to get a full picture of your audience’s intent and the website structure as well.
What is the key theme from above? The allure of volume can be deceiving. When we do digital audits, we see a lot of these patterns reveal themselves the closer we look.
Interested in a digital audit?
Ready to take your FDI marketing to the next level? Contact us if you are interested in a 60-day digital audit for your FDI, talent or place branding website.
