What Are KPIs in Marketing?

If you’re asking yourself, “What is a marketing KPI?”, you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading to find out the definition of marketing KPIs, and how you can choose the right ones for your business and goals. And give us a call at 888-601-5359 if you want to improve your online presence!

What are marketing KPIs?

As a marketer, do you ever ask yourself, “what are marketing KPIS?”

Marketing key performance indicators, or KPIs, are the metrics that determine whether or not a marketing strategy is helping you achieve your business goals.

Although there are thousands of numbers related to your various campaigns you could monitor, KPIs are the ones you’ve deemed most important as a part of your performance marketing campaign.

Now that you know the definition of marketing KPIs, it’s important to remember that depending on your industry and goals, there are many different metrics you may want to focus on. For example, if you’re working on improving your website, your KPIs might be server speed, load time, and bounce rate. If you’re working on customer service, you might choose to monitor customer retention and employee response time.

Thanks to advances in Internet marketing, you now have the ability to collect data on virtually every aspect of your marketing strategy.

This is great news if you already have specific goals, but can be extremely overwhelming if you don’t know which data sets to look at. This is why choosing marketing KPIs is important. By focusing on only the most important metrics, you can determine your marketing success and continue to improve.

Measuring the metrics that affect your bottom line.

Are you interested in custom reporting that is specific to your unique business needs? Powered by MarketingCloudFX, WebFX creates custom reports based on the metrics that matter most to your company.

• Leads
• Transactions
• Calls
• Revenue

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11 must-track marketing KPIs

Now that you know the answer to, “What is a marketing KPI,” how about reviewing some of the most valuable marketing KPIs? If you’re serious about tracking the performance of your online marketing campaigns, you will want to monitor these 11 KPIs.

Your spend can include a range of expenses, like the following:

• Ad spend
• Freelancers
• Software
• And more

If you want an accurate cost per lead number, calculate your cost per lead by channel.

For example, if your company uses social media advertising and SEO services, calculate cost per lead for each channel. You may find that SEO, for instance, outperforms social media, which can influence your future marketing budgets.

3. Organic traffic

Your organic traffic monitors the amount of organic traffic coming to your website. As an example, your site may receive traffic from social media, paid ads, and organic channels. Organic traffic matters because it’s free.

In comparison, paid ads require a monthly ad spend.

Organic traffic also provides insight into your SEO strategy. You can measure your organic traffic to assess the rankings of your website in search results. Plus, you can use those organic traffic numbers to see if your site attracts valuable organic traffic.

You can monitor your organic traffic in Google Analytics, which is free.

4. Return on investment

Your return on investment (ROI) measures the financial performance of your marketing and advertising efforts. Like any business, your company wants to see a return on your work. Your ROI can measure that, as well as show decision-makers the value of marketing and advertising immediately.

The following formula will calculate your ROI:

ROI = Net Profit / Total Investment * 100

Like cost per lead, you want to calculate your overall ROI and your ROI by channel. For example, your business may calculate the ROI of your social media marketing and social media advertising strategy, and then generate an overall ROI from both of those strategies.

5. Customer lifetime value

Your customer lifetime value (LTV) assesses the long-term (or lifetime) value of the average customer. Calculating the average lifetime value of clients can help your company build better marketing budgets, as well as develop a reasonable cost per lead.

Use the following formula to calculate your LTV:

LTV = Customer Value * Average Customer Lifespan

You can get your average customer lifespan by calculating the average number of years a customer remains a client. For example, if you offer software as a service (SaaS), your target audience may remain a client for a few years. In comparison, an ecommerce store may see a much shorter client lifespan.

For customer value, you can use this formula:

Customer Value = Average Purchase Value * Average Purchase Frequency

Based on your LTV, you can make informed decisions about your marketing and advertising efforts.

If you have a high LTV, for instance, you may pay become comfortable with a higher cost per lead. In comparison, if you have a low LTV, you may make changes to your marketing and advertising efforts to lower your cost per lead.

With these marketing KPIs, you can start making the most of your marketing strategies.

6. Leads

You’ll want to keep track of your leads to determine how well your marketing channels perform. You’ll likely get leads through the following channels, and should have a way to keep track of them all:

• organic search
• paid ads
• social media
• email
• website

LeadTrackerFX – part of WebFX’s proprietary software suite (MarketingCloudFX), is a fantastic way for our clients to keep track of leads, where they’re coming from, and if they’re quality.

7. Sales growth

Are your sales growing? Are you making sales? Are sales going up in value or quality?

Keeping track of these key questions are crucial to a succcessful marketing campaign. They reveal what you could be doing better, what areas of your marketing campaign to focus on, and more.

8. Search rankings

Where do your most important keywords rank in search? If they’re not ranking well, you’ll likely find it difficult to attract high-quality traffic to your website.

Keyword targeting is an important part of your marketing campaign because when done correctly, they can help you rank highly in search — increasing website traffic and conversions.

9. Social media traffic

The traffic you get to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn is important to track as well. You can learn a lot about your target audience by studying who follows you, what content they interact with, and more.

Your social media traffic and performance can also help you get a read on whether you need to revamp your social strategy, or it’s good the way it is.

10. Inbound links

Inbound links point back to your website from other high-quality sites. They can help boost your authority, and they look great to Google (if your inbound links are quality.)

For example, an inbound link from Forbes is a better link than one from your local coffee shop, though a mix of links with different authorities is beneficial.

11. Churn rate

Churn is also known as “churn rate” or “customer attrition.” It refers to the number of customers who stop working with your company over a given period of time, and it’s an important KPI to track.

Your churn can help you understand if you have holes in your business model, and can help you determine what holes you need to patch to keep clients with your company longer.

Which marketing KPIs are the most important?

While you could measure all sorts of marketing KPIs, it makes the most sense to focus on those that match your goals. What are you hoping to achieve with your online marketing program? Although the specifics depend on your industry, most marketing KPIs fall into three categories: financial, social, and website performance.

Financial

The goal of all marketing is ultimately to generate more revenue for your business, so it can be beneficial to look at how each part of your strategy benefits you financially. So what types of financial KPIs should you monitor?

One of the most basic indicators is total revenue. If you’re improving month-over-month, you’re doing something right. If not, something needs to change.

More specifically, you’ll also want to know the average customer value. By figuring out how much you can expect to make from each new lead, you’ll be able to determine how much you are willing to spend on attracting them.

Along the same lines, you should track your cost per lead. How much, on average, does it cost you to attract a potential client? With methods like PPC advertising, it’s easy to measure how much you pay for each visitor to your site.

Website performance

Your website can be a great indicator of your company’s overall success, and can provide a ton of insight into your demographic, consumer behavior, and

One of the easiest things to measure is the amount of unique visitors your site has. By monitoring this number over time, you can see whether or not new people are discovering your business.

Beyond this, you should also monitor where your visitors are coming from. Traffic can come from organic search, links from other sites, and a variety of other sources, and knowing where you are most successful can help you decide where to focus your strategy.

In addition to the volume and origination of your visitors, you can keep see what they do once they arrive on your site. Bounce rate and conversions can tell you whether or not your site makes people want to leave or stay and take steps to contact you.

Social

Social metrics help you evaluate the success of your social media marketing efforts. Although it can be tempting to focus on your follower counts or ratios, it’s important to stay focused on numbers that indicate engagement.

On platforms like Twitter, you should always monitor your mentions. By when your business comes up in conversation, you can get a good idea of the general sentiment towards your brand.

On platforms like Facebook, you should aim for comments and shares. Although page and post likes are indicative of awareness, people who

are more likely to actually become customers.

There are many other KPIs worth monitoring depending on your business, but try to choose a few from each of these three categories. You may decide to add other metrics later based on your findings, but unless you have a large marketing team to do it for you, trying to monitor everything all at once will likely leave you overwhelmed.

How can you measure marketing KPIs?

Once you’ve chosen your KPIs, you need to create a strategy for monitoring and measuring them. Effective measurement requires three steps:

Set specific goals

It’s nice to know how your business is performing, but there has to be a reason for measuring. Do you want to increase sales? Acquire more customers? Lower your cost per lead?

Determine what your goals are, and then set specific, measurable goals for your KPIs. Instead of just saying that you want to “increase web traffic,” say that you want to “have 10,000 unique visitors in the month of May.”

Use analytics tools

There are many analytics tools available to Internet marketers, like KPI dashboards. Before launching your marketing strategy, take the time to get familiar with at least one.

If you’re not sure where to get started, Google Analytics is an excellent tool. Although you may end up opting for premium services later, the free version will tell you everything you need to know when you’re just starting out.

Monitor your results

The final step is to measure your efforts using the KPIs you selected. You can measure as often as you want, but this will likely depend on how large your marketing team is. If you’re a business owner, you probably won’t have time to check in every day. That’s fine, but create a schedule so that you don’t lose track completely.

When you check your KPIs, be sure to record your results. Whether you choose to use a spreadsheet, word document, or other tool, this is arguably the most important part of developing your marketing strategy. By keeping track of your KPIs over time, you can see what’s working and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Only you know what defines success for your business, which is why KPIs vary from company to company. The most important thing is that you keep track of them and use them to your advantage.

Explore More: How to Measure KPIs

FREE marketing KPI calculators from WebFX

Do you want to calculate important marketing KPIs quickly?

Check out our collection of FREE calculators to help!

CPC Calculator

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Conversion Rate Calculator

CPM Calculator

Churn Rate Calculator

ROAS Calculator

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WebFX can help you track important marketing KPIs

If you aren’t sure how to choose KPIs or analyze their success, feel free to contact us. Our dedicated team of Internet marketers is more than happy to help you develop a measurable strategy for growing your business.