How do you measure success? Don Draper of Mad Men said it best – “Success is related to standing out, not fitting in.” But how do you know you’re standing out in the world of marketing? By setting measurable goals and tracking them using the right metrics and indicators.
There are tons of different metrics you can track, but the key is identifying the ones that indicate whether you’re progressing toward your marketing goals. These key performance indicators, or KPIs, are what really tell you whether you’re hitting those benchmarks for success.
Whether it’s an increased conversion rate, a certain number of new leads or a specific monetary goal, tracking the right KPIs can help you focus on the campaigns and marketing tactics that have the greatest business impact and ROmI. We’ll show you the top 10 KPIs you should track to keep your business on target to hit your marketing and sales goals.
As a marketing professional, you’re probably already tracking things like sales revenue, leads and cost-per-acquisition. But those don’t give you the full picture of your marketing health. There are several key KPIs missing in that lineup that can help you measure your marketing strategy’s performance and make any adjustments to budget or tactics for the best possible outcome. And here they are:
No business wants to invest in a marketing strategy with a poor ROI–yet that’s exactly what can happen if you can’t directly relate revenue to a particular marketing effort. Look beyond the number of leads you gained to how much revenue you can attribute to a particular strategy. For example, how did social media impact your bottom line? What about blogging or other digital marketing campaigns?
Knowing exactly how much revenue you can attribute to each marketing effort can help you better prove their value and focus on campaigns with a high ROmI.
CAC is all about calculating the total sales and marketing spend required to gain a new customer. This is everything from the manpower needed to create and carry out the campaign to the technology used and the salaries or commissions of your sales team.
To calculate your CAC for digital marketing efforts, take a look at these costs as they relate to a strategy:
For outbound marketing tactics, you’ll need to measure your advertising and distribution spend in addition to manpower and overhead costs. Much like knowing how much revenue a particular effort can get you, knowing how much a marketing tactic will cost your business can help you account for new sales and make smarter budgeting decisions.
Knowing your CAC for a particular campaign can also help identify areas for improvement. For example, by adding relevant content links and intuitive CTAs throughout your blog and web content, you can boost your conversion rates while potentially lowering overall marketing costs.
CLV tracks how much a business can expect to gain from a single customer over the average lifetime of the relationship. Tracking this KPI can help you identify high ROI tactics that nurture new leads while also reaching customers further down the funnel.
Once again, ROI should be a key driver in determining your future marketing strategy. Knowing which digital marketing tactics are resonating with your audience will help you plan and execute campaigns that add true business value.
Understanding the “who, why and where” of your website traffic helps identify where the holes are in your digital content. Seeing steady traffic but a low traffic-to-lead ratio? You’re missing that hook that would spark visitors to stick around and investigate your content further.
Take a look at which pages or content have the highest bounce rate or the lowest view-to-contact rate, then focus on optimizing those pages to drive leads. Do you need to add or change a CTA or contact form? Do your social media ads and other digital campaigns drive visitors to the content they want to see?
Another important KPI to track is how many leads you converted to customers during a certain time period or marketing campaign. This includes both sales qualified leads (leads that are considered ready to buy) and sales accepted leads (those who have contacted you or scheduled a call).
Measuring this KPI helps determine whether you need to explore better lead-capturing campaigns and/or streamline the sales process. One way to do this is through assignment selling, or using content to educate prospects to close the deal faster.
Conversion rate is one of the key indicators that show your content and marketing tactics are working for your audience. No matter how good a landing page looks or how much traffic it gets, a low conversion rate indicates you need to make a change.
How? Try rewording your CTAs to convey more value–or even change their color to attract attention. Weed out any unnecessary content and make the content you have more persuasive. Add customer reviews, awards or other info to boost potential leads’ confidence in your product or service.
High organic traffic means potential customers are finding your content on their own–a great indicator that your SEO strategy is working effectively to generate new leads. This should be a top goal of every business’s digital marketing strategy. Monitoring your organic traffic can help you refine your keywords and rank high for the questions potential customers are asking.
Optimizing your content isn’t just about generating leads, though–you also want to increase the number of pages visitors are interacting with. Knowing which pages your visitors are reading can help you produce more tailored educational content, drive visitors to read more pages and ultimately decrease the amount of time it takes sales to close a deal.
More and more businesses are beginning to understand the importance of social media and the value it can add to your marketing strategy. Tracking the number of leads, conversions and traffic percentage generated from each social media channel can help identify which channels are most profitable for your brand.
We live in a technology-driven world, and it’s a good bet that a majority of your potential customers are browsing your site from a smartphone or other mobile device. And because Google shows a preference for mobile-optimized sites, it’s important to track how well your audience is interacting with your mobile site.
Pay attention to your overall mobile traffic, your mobile bounce rate and conversion rates from mobile devices. This will help you improve visitors’ mobile experience and drive mobile conversions up.
Consistent, thorough tracking of key metrics and KPIs gives you a clear picture of how your marketing strategies are performing so you can make smarter, data-driven decisions. And that’s exactly how we helped vision care provider EyeMed create an intuitive, unified digital experience that has improved the vision benefit experience for plan members and group administrators alike.
Want to find out more? We’d love to walk you through how we analyzed key metrics to build a fresh experience on a data-backed foundation. And we can chat about how we can help improve your digital marketing strategy, too.
