What is a digital marketing key performance indicator (KPI)?
A key performance indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measure, or metric, that you can use to evaluate the performance and marketing activities of your company. KPIs can be used to track anything from employee performance to sales. Here are some examples of digital marketing KPIs.
Digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that are directly related to your digital marketing strategy, such as:
- KPIs for lead generation
- KPIs for brand awareness
- KPIs for sales growth
- KPIs for search engine optimization (SEO).
These KPIs can be derived from a variety of tools and platforms, including:
- Your social media platforms include Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
- AdWords, now Google Ads, or Bing Ads are your PPC tools.
- Google Analytics is one of your web analytics tools.
- Lead conversion tools or tools for your sales team
How to Track Your Digital Marketing KPIs
Tracking various digital marketing KPIs will provide your marketing team with all of the information they need to make sound business decisions. However, keeping this information up to date is time-consuming, especially if you’re marketing across multiple channels.
This is where digital marketing reporting dashboard software can come in handy.
- Connect your marketing channels;
- Choose from a variety of report templates to track SEO KPIs, PPC metrics, email marketing KPIs, social media metrics, and more.
- The tool will compile all of your most important KPIs into an automated KPI dashboard, allowing you to view up-to-date metrics whenever you want.
The Most Important Digital Marketing Key Performance Indicators
While the specific combination of KPIs you track will depend on your business and the channels you’re targeting with your digital marketing campaigns, most companies doing business online fall into one of several categories. These are some examples:
Search engine marketing (SEO)
Social networking sites
Search engine marketing that is paid (SEM)
Email promotion
There are also some general marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that most businesses will benefit from having.
KPIs for general marketing
Customer Loyalty Value (CLV)
A customer’s lifetime value is the amount of revenue that a typical customer generates over time. Depending on your typical retention rate and back-end product or service offerings, this could take a few days, weeks, months, or years.
Cost of acquiring a customer
The acquisition cost is the amount of money needed to acquire a new customer. Advertising, sales calls or visits, and anything else that contributes to your prospecting and conversion process are all examples of this.
Investment Return (ROI)
The ROI is determined by the first two KPIs. When you compare the cost of customer acquisition to revenue generated, it tells you how much profit you make.
KPIs for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Traffic
Total visits, unique visitors, organic traffic, website visitors, traffic sources, page views per session, top pages, and various other KPIs related to traffic coming to your site from Google and other search engines are examples of search traffic metrics.
Keyword Positioning
This KPI will show you where your website ranks for the most important keywords and phrases. You can monitor changes in ranking over time to see what is and isn’t working with your SEO efforts.
Backlinks
Backlinks are a critical component of search engine optimization. When combined with the search traffic KPIs, this KPI allows you to see how many other sites link to yours and how those links affect your rankings and traffic.
Domain and Page Authority
Domain authority is a measure of how much authority search engines place on your website. In other words, how important they believe your content is. Page authority is the same type of measurement applied to individual pages.
Bounce Rate
A bounce occurs when a visitor arrives at your website and immediately clicks away. Tracking this KPI will help you improve your landing pages so that visitors stay on your site longer.
KPIs for social media
Likes, comments, and shares
Likes, comments, and shares are the lifeblood of social media sites. If social media is one of the channels you’re targeting, these KPIs will show you how much exposure you’re getting on those sites.
Rate of Follower Growth
To generate new leads and customers, you need a steady stream of new followers. This KPI will track the rate of growth over time.
Traffic from Social Media
Social media traffic metrics include everything that SEO traffic does (visits, unique visitors, traffic sources, and so on), but from social media sites specifically. You should keep track of your overall KPIs for all channels as well as specific numbers for each.
Conversions on Social Media
You may want to track overall conversions as well as the results of each channel, similar to how you would track social media traffic.
KPIs for Paid Search Marketing
Cost-per-Click (CPC) (CPC)
If you use paid advertising, one of the most important KPIs to monitor is CPC.
Rate of Click-Through (CTR)
So the CTR is another fundamental KPI you need to track when you’re paying for traffic. A higher CTR not only brings you more traffic, but it may also help you lower your CPC in some ad networks.
Quality Rating
The quality score of your ad is one of the factors used by ad networks to determine your CPC. A more relevant ad with a higher CTR will typically have a higher quality score, resulting in lower CPCs.
KPIs for Email Marketing
Rate of Enrollment
The email marketing signup rate is the percentage of visitors to your site who sign up for your email list, regardless of whether you offer a newsletter, white paper, case study, or any other incentive.
Rate of Availability
The open rate is the percentage of people on your email list who open your emails. This KPI is an excellent indicator of the effectiveness of your subject lines.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) If you include links to pages on your website, products or services, or anything else in your emails, you can measure engagement by tracking how many people click on those links.
The Bounce Rate
The bounce rate for emails differs from the bounce rate for website traffic. An email bounce is an undeliverable email that is returned to the sender.
Unsubscribes
Every email you send to your customers should include an unsubscribe link so they can unsubscribe from your list. This KPI allows you to track the number of unsubscribes in order to determine which types of messages are most effective and which lead to more unsubscribed.
