6 Essential KPIs for Digital Marketing
One of the biggest, consistent challenges any digital marketing campaign has involves proving its worth. And the most conclusive way to do this relies on generating and using objective metrics that can show how resources invested are producing desired market results. Anecdotal statements are great for conversations, but decision-makers often vote with their budget as much as they do on strategy and direction. Without clear metrics, proposals and campaigns can be delayed or canceled due to insufficient proof of success. Now that content is a critical factor in generating Internet traffic, measuring how content produces traffic is becoming a key in determining the success and budget of a digital campaign.
These six metric-measuring tools below allow a website owner to analyze content success and capture the data necessary to know customers better. They include:
Return on Investment (ROI)
Hmm. That term sounds like accounting, is it safe? Absolutely, ROI is one of the most important metrics to be paying attention to. This is the bottom line analysis that says and proves the resources and effort put into a digital campaign have been recovered and then some with profit, or not. The ROI is a critical factor in deciding the worth of a digital campaign or whether to keep it going.
Traffic Volume and Organic Searches
This approach involves measuring activity both by the number of visits as well as where the traffic is coming from. It’s one of the oldest website measurements and still one of the most honest with regard to whether a website has relevancy. Additionally, checking whether the traffic is produced by organic searches matters as well; this is traffic based on a search query response versus an advertisement.
Website Conversion Rate
Along with engagement the digital campaign needs to be measuring whether the website is convincing people to respond and act on its call to action. Are there commitments of personal data, email, and contact points? How do these figures measure against the number of visitors as a percentage? That rate is what turns into sales or commitments. Did the sale get all the way to closeout, charge, and payment, or did it just get to a basket of items and then dropped off? If there is quite a bit of dropoff at a given point, using the sales example again, this is where action points can be identified for follow-up.
Cost Per Lead By Source
How much is every lead and committed contact costing the website owner versus what could be improved with a more efficient system? Again, financial figures have a big influence, especially when one lead is gobbling up 80 percent of the effort made.
Revenue Per Lead By Source
Along the same lines as above, which contacts and customers represent the revenue and sales? If the account that takes up 80 percent of the time produces the same in revenue, okay then. One would only argue diversity is needed with more accounts to prevent a big loss when the main account goes away. But folks have no idea where they stand if they don’t measure their accounts versus cost and effort.
Customer Value
The worth of each customer account is similar to Revenue by Source but it takes a bit longer to measure. This is the average sales produced by customers over time versus the cost put into that account. It’s similar to the above two but ties them together over a period, such as a quarter or year. You really begin to see where your effort needs to be aimed by calculating this metric.
At Colling Media, we look at hundreds of different KPI’s in our client’s campaigns but the ones listed above are important KPI’s all marketing executives need to be focused on. We focus on them because we know these metrics will help steer your ship in the right direction. Having an agency that has a finger on the pulse can be a great partner for your business.