Marketing KPIs exist to give you benchmarks of success. You can measure the effectiveness of certain campaigns, see where your strategy is lacking and devise data-driven strategies for improvement. It puts numbers to each of your efforts so you can make informed decisions moving forward. Letâs take a closer look at marketing KPIs and how you can use them to set objectives and measure success.
Key performance indicators are a quantitative measure of your marketing campaigns. They gather data about your efforts and translate them into numbers you can use to adjust accordingly. This might sound like the most basic level of data-driven marketing, but your KPIs can tell you much more than open rates or number of downloads.
Marketing KPIs measure marketing efforts, but they go far beyond a single campaign. They inform performance benchmarking for your company, showing you if and when youâll meet established business or marketing goals. Some marketing KPIs examples include:
These numbers can help you to set realistic objectives based on previous and projected performance. They can even help you to plan your digital marketing strategies around demonstrated performance so you know youâre targeting audiences who will convert.
Helpful KPIs are those that help you measure your progress toward a defined goal. This could be in a specific marketing channel or across all your efforts. There are tons of different marketing KPIs out there to choose from, so you need to know which one will help you the most.
When it comes to choosing metrics to track, you should be looking for indicators that are meaningful to your business. For example, if your business has reached its capacity of clients, youâd want to look at things like the number of services per client instead of the number of new leads.
Itâs important to remember that there are two types of metrics you can use to measure success: KPIs and marketing performance metrics.
KPIs will show how youâre performing against business goals. Things like targeted revenue or new customers. You might look at website traffic to see if your pages are generating enough traffic to create leads or how your quarterly sales are stacking up against your targeted revenue for that period.
Marketing performance metrics are a little different. These measurements support your digital marketing KPIs by showing the success of specific tactics used to achieve your goals. This information is more along the lines of your âtraditionalâ data-driven marketing, measuring specific actions such as organic website traffic or eBook downloads.
Using the right type of performance measurement can give you more specific insights into the area of your business youâre trying to improve. Whether itâs an overall strategy, tracking progress toward your goals, or measuring the success of a single campaign, the right performance metric can inform smart decisions so you get the highest returns on your marketing spend.
We all know there are lots of different ways to measure success. When it comes to KPIs, there are two types of indicators that can help you evaluate your performance and plan for the future. Although each can be used exclusively, itâs wise to use both so you can create a comprehensive picture of where you are now and determine a path to reach where youâd like to be later.
The first type of KPI benchmark is a leading indicator. These metrics look at future outcomes based on current performance and try to predict where your business will land if it continues on the same trajectory. This might look like a projection of whether youâll hit your goal for new customer acquisition based on how many new customers youâve signed per month year-to-date. Leading indicators are often unique to your business and its goals.
The other is a lagging indicator. These metrics are retrospective; they look at past performance and evaluate whether you achieved your goal. One example of a lagging indicator is revenue. Youâve already earned that money; you canât change the outcome, but you can measure if you hit your target. This information can help you set realistic goals for the next financial period and be prepared to meet your target revenue.
With all these metrics, you have to keep in mind that theyâre intended to give you a path for change. Sometimes managers will over-report and track every detail but never make adjustments to change negative results. So when youâre building your data-driven digital marketing strategy, remember to consider both types of metrics and use them as guides until you find the best method for success.
As we mentioned, there are plenty of marketing KPIs to choose from. A few, however, stand out from the crowd as generally beneficial for any business to keep an eye on. Some even have supporting metrics that can give you a more detailed view of the overall performance.
As you probably noticed in the list above, the most important metrics to track have to do with leads and conversions. You want to make sure leads are moving through the sales funnel at a somewhat predictable rate and closing at acceptable ratios.
To see how leads move through your sales funnel and to make sure you have enough prospects in each section at any given time, match the metrics you measure with the different portions of your funnel. This can give you a better idea of how many people move from one stage to the next and if you need to increase or improve your marketing efforts in any area.
This part of your funnel corresponds with the awareness phase in the customer journey. Here, youâre simply trying to increase your business discoverability and encourage or attract new customers. You can do this by utilizing SEO tactics, opting into pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns, leveraging your social channels, and/or creating valuable content for readers. Here are some KPIs that are used to evaluate the success of your marketing efforts towards buyers in this stage of their buyerâs journey:
Once leads move into the middle of the funnel, your job is to engage and nurture them. You want to find ways to encourage them to further action on your page and give them the information they need to make a buying decision. Things like optimizing landing pages for conversions, capturing leads through forms, and including clear CTAs on your web pages are a few ways to accomplish this. Helpful KPIs for this audience include:
Leads that make it all the way to the bottom of your funnel are prime candidates to become customers. These should be SQLs that are ready to convert because theyâve made it to the final stages of the customer journey.
If youâre pushing a good number of people into the bottom of your funnel, but not converting enough of them, then this is a point where managers should reevaluate their strategy. You can monitor data from different KPIs to do this, including:
Key performance indicators are more than just reports to share with business leaders and executives. Marketing managers should also be privy to the data KPIs provide so they can analyze and adjust strategies to reach company goals. Letâs look at one example of how utilizing KPIs can help a marketing leader.
Taking an overview of their companyâs marketing efforts, a manager might find:
With this picture, the manager can see that the website is converting one customer per 500 visitors. That number can then help them decide if this is a worthwhile return on their investment or if they need to consider other tactics to improve the conversion rate. Itâs important for managers to have access to all the companyâs KPIs because looking at all three of these together gives them a more complete picture of performance than viewing them individually.
Now a manager can reassess their strategy to boost performance or continue using these tactics across other channels if that was their desired conversion rate.
Metrics donât come from thin air, so to create valuable marketing KPIs, you also need effective reporting. Successful reporting starts with choosing the right tool and developing a winning approach. After youâve devised your marketing strategy, focus on these three action items:
We recommend using HubSpot for reporting and tracking metrics. It easily integrates with your website, social media and sales pipelines to seamlessly gather and report data. It also offers interactive dashboards so you and your sales team can easily access and analyze information at any time.
Marketing KPIs are an important part of measuring your success. They can help you see how youâre performing and how you can improve your tactics to reach business and sales goals.
Knowmad knows the power of data when building a digital marketing strategy and uses the marketing KPIs and performance metrics to build top-notch channel strategies for our digital marketing services that help your team meet your business and sales objectives. Reach out to us for a consultation to see how we can help you succeed!