Tracking digital marketing KPIs for better marketing strategies

What is a marketing KPI? How do they help leaders make informed decisions?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a measure of the quantitative success of your marketing campaign. These indicators translate your marketing efforts into numerical values that you can use for adjustments. Although this may seem like the most basic form of data-driven advertising, your KPIs will tell you more than just open rates and the number of downloads.

Marketing KPIs are a way to measure the marketing effort, but they extend far beyond one campaign. Performance benchmarking is a great way to determine if your business will meet its marketing or business goals. Some marketing KPIs examples include:

• Reach and engagement of social media
• Cost per conversion
• Lead to Customer Conversion Rate

You can use these numbers to help set realistic goals based on past and projected performance. You can plan your digital strategies around the performance of previous campaigns so that you are targeting people who will convert.

The KPIs that are most useful to you will help you track your progress towards a specific goal. It could be a particular marketing channel, or it could cover all of your efforts. You can choose from a variety of marketing KPIs, but you must know which will be most helpful.

Selecting the Right Marketing Performance Metrics and KPIs

It would be best if you chose metrics that have meaning for your business when choosing which ones to track. If your business is at capacity, it would be better to follow the number of services per client than the number of leads.

You can measure your success using two different types of metrics: marketing performance metrics and KPIs.

KPIs show you how well you are performing in relation to your business goals. You can use KPIs to track things like revenue targets or new customers. You can check your website traffic and see if it is generating enough leads to render or compare your quarterly sales to your targeted revenue.

These metrics measure marketing performance in a slightly different way. These metrics support your digital marketing key performance indicators by showing you the success of your specific tactics to reach your goals. This information is closer to “traditional” data-driven marketing. It measures particular actions, such as organic website visitors or eBook downloads.

The right performance measurement will give you specific insight into the areas of your business that you are trying to improve. The right performance metric will help you make smart decisions, whether it is for an overall marketing strategy, to track your progress towards your goals, or to measure the success of one campaign.

Lagging vs. Leading Key Performance Indicators

There are many different ways to evaluate success. There are two kinds of KPIs that you can use to assess your performance and plan for the future. Both can be used, but it is best to combine them to get a complete picture of your current situation and to determine the path you need to take to reach your desired destination.

A leading indicator is the first kind of KPI benchmark. These metrics try to predict future outcomes by analyzing current performance. You might use this to project whether you will reach your new customer acquisition goal based on the number of new customers that you have signed up per month. Leading indicators can be unique to your company and its goals.

One is a leading indicator. These metrics are retroactive; they evaluate past performance to determine whether or not you have achieved your goals. Revenue is an example of a lagged indicator. You have already earned the money. Although you cannot change the outcome, you can determine if you met your goal. These figures can help you to set realistic revenue targets for the next period.

You must remember that these metrics are meant to help you make changes. Managers will sometimes overreport, track, and analyze every detail without ever making any adjustments to improve negative results. When you are building your data-driven digital marketing strategy, keep in mind to use both types of metrics as guides until you find what works best.

Most Important Digital Marketing KPIs

There are many marketing KPIs available. Nevertheless, a few stand out as being beneficial to any business. Some metrics have additional supporting metrics that can provide a detailed overview of overall performance.

1. Website Traffic – Increasing website traffic can help you reach new prospects and convert them into leads. While you can use SEO, PPC, and other methods to increase your website traffic, you should also make sure you’re targeting the right traffic according to search intention. We help our clients track this KPI using Google Analytics and HubSpot.
2. Metrics to support your analysis: the volume of organic and paid traffic, new visitors vs. return visitors, and referral visits.
3. Ranking and Keyword Impressions – The keyword impressions measure how many times a website appears in the search results. Your keyword ranking shows where your page appeared in the search results. You want to have high rankings and high impressions to attract the most visitors to your website.
4. Social Reach and Engagement – These two metrics are similar to keywords. Followers can easily measure your social reach. This is a measure of how many people are able to see your post. Your engagement is a way to count how many people engage with your brand through social media, such as shares, likes, and remarks. A successful digital marketing campaign should consider the channels that your brand is most active on.
5. Supporting metrics: Number of subscribers, fans, likes, or comments
6. Email Engagement – Your email marketing campaign may have cost you a lot of money and time, but monitoring the engagement can be a good way to measure its value. When creating new campaigns, gathering data from your email list (like clicks and opens) can be very valuable. Keep in mind, however, that the recent iOS updates make it more difficult for iPhone users to track this information accurately.
7. Open and click-through rate: supporting metrics.
8. Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate – The metric measures how many visitors to your website interact with it (typically by clicking on a call-to-action) and become leads. Optimizing your conversion strategies will improve both the quantity and quality of your tips.
9. Cost Per Lead – It’s easy to go over budget when running a PPC without a clearly defined campaign. A paid search strategy should include a cost-per-lead evaluation. This will help you to determine if your keywords are based on the search intent and stay within your budget. CPL is a great way to get a better understanding of ROI and confirm that you are consistently achieving lower revenue than you had hoped.
10. Lead-to-customer conversion rate – Measuring the rate will tell you how many leads in your database convert into actual customers. This KPI helps you determine your brand’s conversion ratio. The metrics can be used to calculate how many marketing leads you need to reach your sales goal for new customers.
11. Cost Per Customer – You will be able to see how much your business spends on converting one website visitor into a customer. The total amount of money paid to move prospects through the marketing funnel until they make a purchase. Monitoring your cost per customer can provide valuable information on your marketing strategy and sales process. This can ultimately help you to make important business decisions and improve your ROI.
12. MQLs Number – Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are those who show enough promise for your sales team to be contacted. These leads show that you are attracting the right audience, and there is a good chance of converting prospects into customers. This number is lower than your average visitor conversion rate, as it also takes into consideration other factors like where the lead came from and which demographic group they belong to.
13. Supporting metrics include landing page conversion rate, CTA click-through rates, and gated downloading.
14. SQLsSales-qualified leads (SQLs) are usually the most likely to make a purchase. Your sales team should focus their efforts on these leads. It is useful to see how many MQLs become SQLs and how long it typically takes. This can help you determine how long it takes to move a lead through the sales funnel.