Have you ever stopped to consider why your company’s marketing tactics work? Do you know how your company’s marketing is performing? Have you noticed any trends in your company’s performance? Do you have any idea why your firm is doing well—or not so well?
The importance of identifying what’s working and what isn’t in marketing—also known as your company’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – should not be understated. Keep reading to learn about the KPI’s you should be tracking.
As a company operating in the 21st century, there should be no confusion about what is contributing to your marketing’s success. On the other hand, there should be no mystery as to why your firm’s marketing efforts are failing. Every aspect of your marketing should be capable of being quantified. There’s no excuse for not understanding why your company’s marketing efforts are struggling or failing to keep up with the competition. It’s time to start investing some of your time in learning about your firm’s marketing KPIs. Let’s stop procrastinating and start executing!
There are so many marketing and SEO KPIs available today—all of which, most likely, could be useful to your company’s marketing efforts. Chances are, if you do a quick search for “marketing KPIs,” you’ll come up with a variety of information that will help you enhance your marketing plan. However, not all of them are useful. For example, you won’t find any KPIs related to old-fashioned metrics like circulation on this extensive KPI list.
Here is our marketing KPI list you need to track.
1. Sales Growth
At the end of the day, the best method to determine your marketing’s effectiveness is to assess how much revenue it generates. It may take some getting used to when you begin measuring the impact of your marketing on sales growth, but it will all come down to knowing what works and what doesn’t. The method for tracking your sales growth is, nevertheless, critical to the long-term success of your firm. It not only aids in strategic planning, but also offers insights into development patterns.
Remember, you’re in this together. Don’t be afraid to discuss your sales revenue with your employees. This generally promotes a sense of ownership among your staff and emphasizes the fact that everyone is striving for the same ultimate objectives.
2. Leads
It’s simple. The more leads you acquire, the more sales possibilities you have, and the greater your chances of increasing revenue. Leads are similar to gasoline in an automobile—they’re what power the marketing and sales team.
However, not all leads are created equal. Make sure you understand the difference between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). The same lead might go through multiple lifecycle phases during the course of conversion.
A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that has been determined to be more likely to become a customer than other leads based on lead intelligence. Marketing-ready leads are those who have raised their hands (e.g., by downloading an eBook or whitepaper) and identified themselves as more engaged and sales-ready contacts than your normal leads, but have not yet become fully-fledged.
A sales qualified lead (SQL) is one that your sales team has rated as amenable to a direct sales follow-up. SQLs have had much more validation and imply a prospect that is ready to make a decision.
Understanding the synergy between MQLs and SQLs is critical for determining your company’s Leads to Close ratio, which is the number of leads you’ve received over a given time period divided by the total amount of leads you’ve closed.
3. Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA)
The cost of customer acquisition is the money it takes to persuade a potential customer to buy your company’s goods or services. For example, let’s say you spent $400,000 on sales and marketing in a month and closed 30 new customers that month, then your cost of customer acquisition, or COCA, would be $13,333.
4. Website Traffic to Website Lead Ratio
This is pretty straightforward. Of all your website visitors, how many of them convert and become leads? This KPI for website traffic helps measure two things:
- The quality of your website’s traffic
- The conversion rate of your website
What is important here is to get a baseline, what is this ratio currently? And what can you do to improve it? Many times, focusing on improving the website’s conversion rate is an easy way to improve this ratio.
5. Website Lead to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Ratio
Of the website leads generated, how many are promoted to MQL status? This statistic will help you assess the quality of your marketing leads. Do you have a poor conversion rate, with few of your leads ever becoming marketing qualified? If you do, it’s probably time to check the quality of your website traffic.
6. Web Traffic
These are the people who come to your website. They are the potential consumers that may develop into actual buyers.
Knowing who your website’s visitors are, where they’re from, and what they do once they get there is crucial for optimizing your site. All of this data (via Google Analytics, can help you figure out one key factor: what they want from you. Knowing this can help you anticipate your customers’ needs, which is what marketing is all about.
However, using the phrase “Website traffic” may be too broad. Website traffic is made up of many elements: all of which are highly measurable and strongly linked to interaction. Elements of website traffic can include:
- Sessions
- Users
- Page views
- Pages per Session
- Average Session Duration
- Bounce Rate (the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking an action, such as clicking on a link or filling out a form)
7. Social Media Reach and Engagement
Your social media presence is crucial to your inbound marketing campaign because it allows you to share your material and engage with existing and potential consumers.
A good way to judge the social media reach and engagement KPI is to monitor growth (think new followers on Twitter and new “Likes” on Facebook). Both social platforms provide built-in tracking and analysis, making it simple to obtain this data whenever necessary. Through metrics that measure lead conversions, customer conversions, and web traffic linked to your social media efforts, you can also keep track of engagement. Remember that not all social media platforms are appropriate for every company, so be sure to keep track of the ones that count the most to your business objectives.
8. Email Marketing Performance
Aside from social media, your email marketing strategy is your main line of communication with your customer or lead. All email marketing campaigns should be assessed, analyzed, and evaluated repeatedly.
Analyzing your email marketing plan may be complex, and it necessitates its own set of KPIs to be analyzed individually. Examples of email KPI’s include:
- Delivery Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
- Open Rate
- Click-Through Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Forward/Shares
9. Inbound Links (Backlinks)
Link building should be one of the main components of any SEO campaign. When someone links to your website, it indicates that you are establishing authority in your field of business. Think of it as a “thumbs up” for your website when another site links to one of your web pages. The more people that link to your website as an authority, the better your search rankings and the greater number of visitors it will receive over time.
However, not all inbound links are excellent. You want industry-related links from reputable sites. The goal is to acquire links considered “do follow” links, which Google follows in passing link authority to your site (though there is also value in no-follow links).
10. Landing Page Conversions
You’re sunk if your website’s landing pages aren’t enticing people in and converting them. To determine whether or not your landing pages are effective, look at how many people visit them and whether your CTAs are converting them.
Landing pages are intentionally designed to get people to convert. However, if the content on your landing page is poor and has not been optimized for SEO, people may not stay around and your conversion rate will suffer.
11. Blog Post Visits
Knowing the effectiveness of your blog postings is an excellent method to figure out what your consumers enjoy reading and don’t like reading, as well as when they prefer to read. As a result, this raises your brand equity while also allowing you to expand your content based on what your consumers want and desire.
Listen to this: Your blog postings should drive a lot of traffic to your website. Blog postings are regarded as a traffic-generating strategy by our team. It implies that it should drive visitors to your website in two ways. The first way is through posting on social networking sites and sent to your email list. The second requirement is that it should rank and be found in search engines for your important keywords.
Remember, while the number of times you post is significant, the quality and length of the material you’re putting on your blog are even more essential. A lot of businesses have no trouble launching a blog. The difficult part is keeping up with it. Make an effort to stay active with your content, and you’ll see a difference in your blog’s success.
Most B2B firms use marketing analytics to find out what works and what doesn’t. It’s important to track your marketing KPIs so you can validate everything you do as a marketer, whether you work in the B2C or B2B sector. Thanks to the many tracking software now accessible on the market, businesses have more insight into their marketing efforts than ever before. Learn from your marketing blunders and make adjustments. Get to know your marketing accomplishments and share them with management.
Conclusion: Top KPIs for Marketing
It’s hard to know what KPIs are the most important, but these 11 key performance indicators will give you a good idea of how your marketing is doing. If you want help figuring out which metrics matter and how best to measure them for your company, just ask! We can work with you on creating a strategy that takes into account all of the key elements needed for success in today’s digital age. After reading this blog post about KPI measurement, do any new ideas come to mind? What other key performance metrics should you be measuring?
