Introduction
Marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) are indicators that show the operational, financial and/or analytical results of a marketing strategy. Generally these KPIs are included in dashboards and are displayed at different levels of command and department in order to measure and monitor the strategy.
Not all KPIs are suitable for different strategies or businesses. Depending on the objectives and the business model among other things determine the choice of performance indicators, however in this post we will help you in the process of selecting your KPIs for your digital strategy.
What is a Marketing KPI
A marketing KPI is a metric associated with an important aspect to the business, channel or department, which quantitatively measures the performance over a period of time of an activity within the marketing actions.
All KPIs should be metrics but not all metrics can be KPIs.
Basic Features that an online marketing KPI must meet
Marketing KPIs are the way to measure the performance of the actions carried out, i.e. the performance of your work and that of your colleagues.
Therefore, being clear about the metrics that should become KPIs for the business is a fundamental task when establishing your strategies.
When planning a strategy, we must be aware of the requirements that a good marketing KPI must fulfill.
An online marketing KPI must meet the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) framework…
- Specific. This principle means that it must perfectly represent what it describes and be quantifiable.
- Measurable. As well as being quantifiable, it must be clear enough that anyone on the team knows how to measure the metric.
- Achievable. Its collection and quantification must be simple, cost-effective and achievable for the business.
- Relevant. This is where the KPI is linked to the objective to be measured. Your choice must be sufficiently relevant and clear in relation to the objective to be measured.
Time-bound. A KPI should be limited, i.e. it should have a defined timeframe to be achieved. For example, if we want to measure the success of an email marketing campaign, a good KPI would be the “percentage of openings within one month“.
Top 10 KPIs in an online marketing strategy
Establishing marketing KPIs in a digital strategy and displaying them on a dashboard is the epitome of synthesis and a job well done, both in marketing and in analytics, regardless of the results obtained. 
How you measure your marketing objectives depends on all the work you and your colleagues have done. KPIs are the quantifiable values that summarize the work and performance of the whole team.
Just as selling services is not the same as selling products. Measuring products is not the same as measuring services
Traffic by channel.
KPI to know which is the channel that is bringing more traffic to your strategy, in this way you will know which of the marketing actions you have carried out are bringing more traffic.
Scope or outreach
Number of users you have reached or impacted.
This KPI can be extrapolated in different ways depending on the channel.
Thus, in a social media strategy to measure the number of people we reach in social media actions or social ads.
And in an SEO or PPC strategy we can find it under the denomination of impressions.
In any case, this marketing KPI represents the number of users your brand has reached on the different channels through the different actions carried out.
Engagement
This KPI is both vaunted and reviled in equal parts within the online marketing sector.
It is a metric that is surrounded by some controversy, mainly due to its different measurement possibilities.
It is possible, depending on the department and the stage of purchase in which the consumer is, to measure it in different ways.
Here we would like to emphasize that this is a very important metric for any algorithm today. Think about it for a moment, it is the KPI that allows you to measure the set of actions that the user performs with the brand.
Whether it’s a usability department to measure A/B testing, CRO to measure conversions, SEO or SEM to measure interactions or CTR. It is a KPI that should be on your dashboard in your digital strategy.
Lead
This KPI can be found in different ways depending on the business model. In the service and B2B industry is where it makes most sense, as it is the nature of the business that allows us to work with potential or interested customers.
In the case of ecommerce we can find it in “abandoned carts”. It is a way of quantifying the number of people interested in our products who have not completed the purchase.
Cost per lead
Clients
One of the most important marketing KPIs for a CEO or executive director, which is none other than how many customers we have obtained this month. Global metric of the marketing strategy that can always be segmented by channels to know how many customers we have acquired through the actions carried out in every one of them.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate measures the number of conversions obtained in a period of time between the number of users who have carried out the action to be measured, such as subscribing to a newsletter, contacting, or making a purchase, etc.
It is a very frequent KPI in different business areas and can be found in SEO dashboards to measure the conversion rate within the actions carried out in the channel as well as in SEM, Social media email marketing etc..and of course, the department most related to this metric is the CRO department..
ROI
Specific KPI that measures the return on marketing investment, more commonly known as ROI. It is a very common metric in any kind of dashboard and monitors how profitable our marketing investments are being – almost nothing!
CAC
Acronym for Customer Acquisition Cost or in other words, how much money it cost acquiring a customer based on the investment made.
You can use it to measure PPC or Social ads actions, as well as in SEO strategies.
VLC
Customer lifetime value. This is a metric that helps us to measure how long on average a customer or user uses a product or service. Improving this metric is to improve customer loyalty.
In conclusion
“91% of companies believe that with the right data their organization is at a competitive advantage in their markets over the next few years.”
Marketing KPIs are used to monitor and quantify the results of marketing actions, but not all KPIs can be used for the same strategies or business.
Having good KPIs determines a good analysis of your products or services. Having good metrics determines the health of the company or business.
Preguntas Frecuentes
What are the marketing KPIs?
Marketing KPIs are operationally, analytically and financially relevant metrics for the business. Learn the keys to choosing the best and most important marketing KPIs for your strategy.
What is a KPI and examples?
A KPI is a key performance measure for a company or business. They usually appear on a company’s various dashboards and are related to business objectives. Some KPIs examples are:
- ROI
- CAC
- VLC
- Conversion rate
What are digital marketing KPIs?
Digital marketing KPIs are key metrics associated with the objectives of the different digital channels at different stages of the conversion funnel. These KPIs are usually represented in dashboards and are quantified in a quantitative way to understand the performance of the digital marketing strategy.
How to make a marketing KPI?
To create a marketing KPI you must first know what you want to measure and what objective it is related to in your strategy. For this, it is essential applying the SMART framework to work in the definition of a well established marketing KPI.