Listen to the podcast or read the edited, short transcript below:
What are digital marketing KPIs?
Think about it like this: if you’re not tracking the right KPIs, you’re flying blind. And we all know where that’s going to take us.
Nowhere.
You won’t know what’s working, what’s not and where to focus your efforts.
You’ll also have a team to report back to ~ whether it’s a board, investors or a manager, so having these KPIs and goals agreed upon and reported on is essential.
Also, by tracking the right KPIs and making data-driven decisions, you’ll be able to optimise your marketing strategy for maximum results.
In this post, we’ll be sharing a list of digital marketing KPI examples and key performance indicators (KPIs) related to lead generation, brand recognition, and website performance..
While the opportunity is wide, we suggest selecting a few digital marketing metrics and KPIs initially that best suit your business and current marketing activities.
Let’s start building your KPI marketing plan.
Best Digital Marketing KPIs Examples
Lead-based KPI’s
In this first section, we’ll look at some of the essential KPI’s that help us measure where our business is finding leads.
These lead-based metrics measure the success of your efforts to generate leads for your business and help you track your strategies’ effectiveness for attracting and converting potential customers.
Website Traffic
This one is simple, the number of people who walk into your store or visit your website indicates your potential customer base.
By measuring how many people engage with your business, you can gain insight into how well your marketing efforts resonate and make adjustments as needed.
This is a high-level look into an essential KPI, which needs to be broken down specific to your industry, audience and client personas to ensure that you’re speaking to your customers.
Ensuring that you have this targeting right is also essential when the website visitors become leads and you hand these leads onto your sales team.
Website Traffic to Lead Ratio
Getting qualified traffic to your site is one thing; however determining how many visitors turn into leads, you can gain valuable insights into your audience’s behaviour and make informed decisions about your marketing strategies, including getting a better understanding of your cost per acquisition.
With a low website-to-lead ratio, you have an idea that something is breaking down in your funnel, which helps narrow down an investigation into where the breakdown is.
- Is your web copy not talking to your customer persona?
- Are your ads driving irrelevant traffic?
- Is your blog content not suited to your ideal client?
Effective website traffic-to-lead ratios can vary greatly depending on your industry and specific business objectives. However, a commonly accepted benchmark is a ratio of around 2-5%. This means that for every 100 visitors to a website, 2 or 5 of them become leads or perform a specific action that brings them closer to becoming a lead (watching website videos etc.).
Of course, this is just a general guideline and can be higher or lower based on factors such as the quality of traffic, the relevance of the offer, and the conversion optimisation strategy you’re using.
Cost per Lead
You’ll need to define and understand the cost of acquiring a new lead and how it impacts your overall marketing budget.
This is the metric your accountant or bookkeeper will ask you about, so you need to be confident in these numbers.
As with the above example, measuring your cost per lead will give you valuable insights into the efficiency of your marketing efforts but will also clearly show you the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing spend.
This is a crucial KPI, primarily if you source traffic from multiple channels.
Understanding the cost per lead will help you optimise your marketing strategy and make informed decisions about future marketing budgets and investments.
Traffic Acquisition Channel Mix
This example is broad, so breaking this down to fit your marketing strategy is essential.
It would be best if you understood the most valuable source of your website traffic, and by tracking your channel mix, you’ll soon understand the channel that’s driving the best leads and sales to your business.
Does your profitable traffic stem from search engines, Google Ads, social media or direct traffic?
Here’s an example, you may discover that your inbound marketing strategies may result in low-cost leads, but your metrics show that these leads may also be of low value to the business overall.
On the other hand, outbound marketing strategies may be more expensive but bring in high-value leads.
Again, these are examples, and results will differ from your industry, product, audience, etc.
Defining your target channel mix is essential to ensure you’re not solely relying on low-cost channels but also striving for high-value customers.
For instance, you may aim to increase inbound sales by 5% or boost outbound sales by 15% in any particular month.
Tracking Your Brand Relevance KPI’s
KPIs that track your brand relevance is often overlooked and essential in marketing strategies. These KPIs can have a massive impact on your marketing results and costs.
It looks at how often your business is being mentioned in public, whether you are an authority in your industry, whether you are trusted and supported and whether you have a loyal fan base.
Google tracks E-E-A-T as a metric, so you need to do that as well.
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authority
- Trust
Tracking your brand will give you a better indication of how you perform in these areas.
Here are some ideas on particular KPIs that help us determine our success with these:
Social Media Mention Tracking KPIs
Social media plays a significant role in most marketing campaigns online; organic mentions of your brand or products on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn can substantially improve the authority of your organisation.
By tracking social media mentions, you understand who’s talking about you and what they’re saying.
This can also help drive our internal staff and teams to encourage our existing customers and fanbase to share relevant content and mention our brand to their networks – turning your current customers into mini (and often very powerful) influencers.
Tracking your NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Your NPS score isn’t typically a marketing metric to track. However, in business, we need to be focused on building that trustworthiness in our marketplace (people talk) and also use it to inform critical decisions on our products, services and marketing strategies.
An NPS score stands for “Net Promoter Score”.
It’s a way for businesses to find out how happy their customers are with their products or services.
Imagine you go to a store and buy a toy. After you play with the toy, the store might ask you, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this toy to a friend?”
If you say 9 or 10, you liked the toy and would tell your friends about it.
You’re OK with the toy if you say 7 or 8.
And if you say 1-6, you liked the toy much less.
The store combines all the responses from everyone who buys that toy and finds the average. This average is called the NPS score.
Using your NPS score in your business can help us shape your marketing strategy, as often it leads to data that better informs your products, services and the way you market them. As an added bonus, focusing on your NPS score is also invaluable for tracking and increasing your customer lifetime value, which then improves your marketing ROI.
Does Your Website Need KPIs to Monitor Performance?
Yes, it’s one thing attracting a person to your business; however, your website then needs to assist in converting your potential ‘hand raisers’ into leads or customers – if it doesn’t, then you have a real problem.
We covered a few examples of these KPIs above. However, there are other vital metrics you could be looking at in addition to “How much traffic is your website getting”.
Tracking your on-page conversion rate
An on-page conversion rate looks at how many people who visit a specific page on your website do what you want them to do. For example, start a free trial, fill in a lead form or buy a product.
Knowing this is important because it helps you figure out which pages on your website are the most helpful for getting people to take action.
By understanding this, you can make other pages on your website even better or make relevant improvements to your existing pages to help increase your conversion rate, including improving your ‘bounce rate’ (you’ll find this metric in Google Analytics) and making improvements to your on-page call to action.
To measure the on-page conversion rate, you’ll need metrics on how many people visited a specific page and whether they ended up doing what you want.
Then divide that number by the total number of visitors to the page.
Tracking a Users Time on Site and Engagement KPIs
You have a website that sells board games.
Suppose website visitors click an ad and only spend a few seconds on your site before leaving.
In that case, it’s a sign that they need help finding what they’re looking for or that your marketing and content strategy isn’t finding people that fit your ideal customer profile.
Either way, these are metrics that you need to be tracking to ensure that your landing pages are clear, defined, easy to navigate and clear about what you want users to do.
New User to Returning User Ratio
This one’s simple but also necessary.
New users are users who visited your site for the first time. Returning users are users who have visited your website before.
Over time, you should start to see that conversion rates are higher based on returning users, and typically they lead to higher conversion rates.
This is because they’ve made a conscious effort to return to your site. They’re interested in what you offer and are likely to take action.
Measuring your returning visitor numbers allows you to inform your marketing strategy. For example, driving a high number of returning visitors via a remarketing campaign can help convince users to take action.
KPIs For Your Digital Marketing Strategy
These are just some of the crucial KPIs for a successful marketing strategy. These thought starters are intended to get you thinking about the level of detail your strategy needs. However, they’re also crucial in ensuring your marketing efforts aren’t wasted.
These will allow you to measure your progress, understand your audience, and make informed decisions about the direction of your business.
We’re marketing strategy experts, and building digital marketing strategies that inform and report on marketing KPIs is what we do. If you need assistance deciphering your existing plan, finding new KPIs you need to be tracking or starting building your new strategy from scratch – book a discovery call with our team today to see if we are the right fit.
