What happens when you ask your team which KPIs indicate success for digital marketing? You gather a diversity of opinions that would make Google jealous.
Without a consensus around data, nothing gets measured and nothing can improve – yet nearly 50% of marketers struggle to align their KPIs to their overall business goals.
KPIs are a measurable value that reflects a business objective and your company’s progress towards that end. They help you assess how successful you are in reaching a specific goal.
To avoid any confusion, KPIs are different than metrics. Metrics are simply data measurements whereas KPIs are used to assess strategy.
Here are 10 digital marketing KPIs to help you evaluate the success of your campaigns.
This is the percentage of revenue that originated from digital marketing initiatives.
To calculate, total the revenue in a given period. Then determine how many of your closed leads were generated by the digital marketing team, and multiply by 100.
This will help you assess the campaign’s impact, optimally allocate your budget, and prove the ROI of your digital marketing.
Marketing automation saves you time on this typically laborious task by automatically tracking each customer’s interactions across initiatives and campaigns until a final sale.
Lead quality shows you how aligned your lead generation efforts are with what your customers are actually looking for. According to Smart Insights, 48% of marketers say that only 50% of their leads are “good quality” and ready for nurturing or sales.
If you’re flush with quality leads, your digital marketing efforts are clearly resonating with your audience. But if lead quality is low, you should re-evaluate how your messaging is addressing your customers’ needs.
Lead scoring allows you to assess the quality of your leads. This methodology assigns points to visitor interactions to rank leads.
Scoring leads enables you to prioritize and engage the most qualified leads in your marketing funnel. To best determine what constitutes a qualified lead, get your sales and marketing teams in a room together and talk through it.
The number of leads you generate indicates the reach and quality of your digital marketing campaigns.
Lead generation is the top priority for B2B marketers, yet only leading brands are achieving their lead gen goals, according to Kapost.
This KPI is critical because a larger volume of leads translates to a greater number of sales opportunities. It shows you if your digital marketing campaign is reaching enough prospects to drive results.
Customer lifetime value (LTV) is the projected value of a customer during their entire relationship with your brand.
LTV is important because, for most marketers, it’s cheaper to sell to existing customers than to new customers.
The probability of converting a new customer is 5%-20%. However, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60%–70%, according to the book Marketing Metrics.
To measure LTV, subtract the cost to acquire and serve the customer from the customer revenue. This is a simplified approach and your industry may contribute other variables worth considering.
Knowing your LTV will help you to plan future marketing campaigns and improve customer interactions. It will also show you the optimal way to budget for customer acquisition and customer retention.
The value of your digital marketing operation is determined by its ability to translate leads into sales. Gauge the effectiveness of landing pages by the number of people who visit them and actually convert.
To find your conversion rate, divide the number of prospects in a given period by the number of customers acquired from landing pages.
Collect these numbers from your website analytics or your automation database, then multiply by 100.
If conversion rates are coming out low, focus on your segmenting, channel alignment, and the perceived value of your gated resources.
This ratio helps you to measure the quality of website traffic and your website conversion rate.
To calculate, determine how many website visitors convert into leads.
Seek first to find a baseline for your website. What is your current ratio? How can you improve it? Low conversions point to issues with the lead magnet, landing page copy, or user experience (UX) design of your website.
This graphic illustrates how high volumes of site traffic eventually become leads and customers.
If you know the ratio of web traffic to website leads, you can predict the total volume of traffic needed to reach your digital marketing goals.
The number of people visiting your website suggests the total numbers of available prospects. Comparing the volume of visitors against web traffic metrics can help you improve your lead generation efforts.
Specifically, look at metrics such as:
Any information gleaned from traffic interactions will help you discern what your visitors want from your site. Anticipating and addressing your visitors’ needs will allow you to target your audience segments more effectively.
The customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the amount needed to convert a prospect to a customer. For example, if your digital marketing budget is $10,000 and you close 10 new customers that quarter, your CAC is $1,000.
With CAC measured, you can set your goals for customer acquisition and budget accordingly. Be thorough in tabulating the costs per each acquisition, including any fees, expenses, or costs.
The performance of your blog posts indicates what your audience wants to read (and doesn’t). Clarity around your content assets means you can invest in resources that create brand equity and drive engagement with users.
The best-performing blogs are around 1,600 words in length, according to Buffer. They also feature high-quality, original images and other rich media to provide a positive user experience.
To encourage blog readership, invest in engaging and educational content that will hook and sustain the reader’s interest.
Email is critical to digital marketing success, as a way to both engage users and drive revenue. Be sure to analyze each of your email marketing campaigns by multiple key metrics such as:
From headlines and body copy to send rates and calls to action, effective email marketing includes many factors. Be sure to pay close attention to every element of your email marketing to ensure high opens and conversions.
Why are best-in-class marketers so attuned to their data? Simply, because they know that effective campaigns are informed by real-time insights and data-driven optimization.
With ready access to digital marketing KPIs, you can achieve total clarity across your marketing and sales efforts – and marketing automation makes it easy to stay responsive and drive meaningful results.
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