KPIs help you track progress towards your marketing goals, and justify a budget that delivers value for all stakeholders. They identify strengths and weaknesses — basically what’s working and what needs improvement.
You gain data to make informed marketing decisions, and set realistic targets based on past performance.
So, we’re looking at Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for digital marketing. Great analytics tools and selecting the right KPIs can amplify success measurement, and maximize the success of your digital marketing efforts.
What do I mean by (KPIs) in digital marketing? KPIs are quantifiable measures used to evaluate the success of a campaign in meeting objectives for performance. In digital marketing, KPIs help you understand if your marketing efforts are paying off and guide your future strategies.
Picking The Right KPIs
Every KPI can’t work with every type of business. Choosing the right KPIs for your specific industry, business model, and other unique variables will define how accurate your measurement is.
- Does your selected KPI deliver the answers you need for your specific business objectives?
- Is the selected KPI a good choice for your specific marketing funnel?
- Does it measure what you need?
- Does it provide metrics that can assist greater implementation of performance optimization moves?
- Are you using enough metrics to measure results?
Website Traffic KPIs
One of the first KPIs that marketers want to dive into are meant to measure website traffic. What do they look at ?
- Number of visits
- Number of unique visitors
- Number of page views
- Average time spent on page by the visitor
- Bounce rate
- Source of traffic
Marketers know that looking at any of these metrics in isolation is not a correct measurement plan.Total visits may be high alongside high bounce rate, which is terrible for ranking and measuring success. Multiple metrics, used together, will provide a clearer picture of whether or not your digital marketing efforts are producing results.
Customer-Centric KPIs
Customers and the unique journey they take to conversion, can be measured by the following metrics.
- CLV or Customer Lifetime Value communicates how much potential worth a customer holds for your business during their lifespan
- NPS or Net Promoter Score is a measure of how likely your customers are to recommend your business.
- CSAT or Customer Satisfaction Score measures customer satisfaction
- Customer Retention Rate is the percentage of customers you actually retain during a specific time period
- Repeat Purchase Rate is how often your customers return to repurchase
Conversion Rate KPIs
Marketers love visitors — but only if they’re actually converting into customers. As a digital marketer or business owner, you want visitors to take a specific action of purchase. To measure conversions, look at:
- Overall Conversion Rate, which is the percentage of visitors who take action
- Goal Completion, which is the frequency of a business’s desired action
- Cart Abandonment Rate, which communicates the percentage of visitors who addeditems to their cart but didn’t actually purchase
- Form Completion Rate, which is the percentage of visitors that responded to a form with the effort of filling it out
- Cost Per Conversion, which defines the cost you incurred as a business to get a visitor to convert into a customer
Email Marketing KPIs
Test, modify, optimize — email marketers know it’s all about constant effort to make it work. To accurately measure email marketing success, you want to look at:
- Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open your email.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who took action.
- Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails that weren’t delivered.
- Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed.
- List Growth Rate: The rate at which your email list is growing.
Social Media KPIs
A brand’s performance on various platforms can be understood by considering the following:
- Follower Growth Rate: The rate of growth of follower numbers.
- Engagement Rate: The number of likes, comments, shares on your posts.
- Reach: How many unique users saw your content.
- Impressions: The number of times your content was displayed.
- Click-Through Rate: The percentage of people who click on links in your posts.
- Conversions from Social: The number of conversions that can be credited to social media.
SEO KPIs
It’s all about organic visibility, and for that, we track SEO performance. SEO KPIs to look at:
- Organic Traffic
- Keyword Rankings
- Domain Authority
- Backlink Quality and Quantity
- Page Load Speed
- Organic Click-Through Rate
Paid Advertising KPIs
Measure your ad spend, or else you’ll be blindly burning valuable marketing dollars. If you’re investing in paid advertising, look at these KPIs:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click on your ad
- Cost Per Click (CPC): The average cost of each click
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): How much you spend to gain a customer
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): The revenue you generate for every dollar spent on advertising
- Quality Score: Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords and PPC ads
- Impression Share: How often your ads are shown compared to the total number of opportunities you actually had
Content Marketing KPIs
The following KPIs help you understand and evaluate how well your content is performing, so you can make changes where needed. Look at these KPIs:
- Page Views
- Average Time on Page
- Social Shares
- Inbound Links
- Lead Generation
- Returning Visitors
Mobile KPIs
How do you measure the success of your mobile marketing efforts? Look at the following:
- Mobile Traffic (the percentage of your traffic coming from mobile devices)
- Mobile Conversion Rate (the percentage of mobile visitors who converted)
- App Download numbers
- App Retention Rate
- Mobile Page Load Time
Brand Awareness KPIs
Measure your market presence to decipher the success of those ad dollars, Let these KPIs help you understand:
- Brand Mentions: How often was your brand mentioned online?
- Share of Voice: How much of the overall conversation in your industry is credited to your brand?
- Branded Search Volume: How many people searched for your brand name?
- Media Coverage: How often did your brand appear in media outlets?
- Social Media Followers: What size is your social media audience?
ROI KPIs
Ultimately, it’s all about the bottom line. Most businesses want to know if their marketing efforts are even profitable.
- Return on Investment (ROI): The overall return on your marketing investment.
- Cost Per Lead: How much you’re spending to acquire each lead.
- Cost Per Acquisition: How much you’re spending to acquire each customer.
- Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio (LTV:CAC): Compares the value of a customer over their lifetime to the cost of acquiring them.
Setting Up Your KPI Dashboard
Once you’ve identified the KPIs that can deliver the understanding to maximize results of your business objectives, set up a system for tracking and analyzing results.
- Step 1 — Choose a Dashboard Tool (Google Data Studio, Tableau, Looker)
- Step 2 — Set Up Regular Reporting (weekly, monthly, quarterly)
- Step 3 — Make It Accessible (relevant team members to access and understand the dashboard)
- Step 4 — Benchmarks and Targets (add context to your KPIs with industry benchmarks and targets)
- Step 5 — Keep It Up-to-Date (update with the latest data)
Drive Strategy With KPIs
You’ve measured, now you elevate information into profit. Tracking KPIs is not the end goal. Use the info to identify trends that you can leverage. Diagnose issues that might be causing underperformance.
Learn. Use these insights to perform A/B tests. Allocate resources to more high-performing areas identified by your KPIs. Set more realistic, data-driven goals for future campaigns. It’s about gaining insights that drive your strategy forward.