You need marketing metrics and KPIs to measure the success of your campaigns. Marketing is a science, and you must use data to support all your efforts. Metrics can be a great help for marketers who want to review what they’re doing and improve their campaigns.
But not everybody is aware of these marketing metrics and how to use them. Each metric corresponds to a different aspect of marketing, and so it’s vital to understand them first.Â
Table of contents
What Are Marketing Metrics?
Marketing metrics are indicators that marketers measure to track the performance of their campaigns. These are quantitative metrics that indicate how successfully a campaign is performing.
Most marketing metrics are dependent on audience reactions to your campaigns. These reactions can be positive or negative and are direct indicators of how your audience receives your marketing efforts. As such, a marketing metric shows how your campaign affects your audience’s purchase decision.
Every campaign is unique and targets a different aspect of your audience. As such, different campaigns will have different metrics. Marketers have to figure out which metric matters most to their campaigns and then collect the right data to monitor and track those metrics.
Why Are They Important?
No campaign is perfect and will have flaws. The important thing is that marketers figure out these shortcomings and adjust their campaigns accordingly. But how do they do this? Here’s where metrics come in.
Marketing metrics provide an in-depth analysis of a campaign’s performance. Each metric corresponds to an aspect of the campaign. If a metric isn’t showing good results, marketers will know that aspect needs to be adjusted. They will then devise strategies and optimize their campaign until that metric improves.
Metrics are also indicative of the success of a marketer’s efforts. If they’re able to realize metrics that meet or exceed the industry benchmarks, they can vie for a bigger budget or new projects.
How to Set Your Marketing Metrics?
Choosing the wrong metrics can be detrimental to your campaign. Even if a metric is performing well, it won’t be indicative of the success of your campaign because it doesn’t represent the campaign accurately. This is why choosing the right metrics is crucial to your campaign.
When choosing marketing metrics for your campaign, there are only two things to focus on: goals and focus.
The first step is to identify your goals. What do you want to achieve with this campaign? How do you want your audience to react to your campaign? Here’s a simple example. If you want people to interact with your campaign, the click-through rate is an ideal metric. Average time on page would be the wrong metric here.
You might be tempted to track as many metrics as you can. And that’s understandable. Most marketers want a holistic and comprehensive view of their campaign’s performance. But it’s important to focus on metrics that are directly related to the goals you’re aiming for. This focus keeps you on the right path and doesn’t let inconsequential metrics divert your attention.
Examples of Marketing Metrics
We talked about how it’s important to focus on specific aspects of your campaign and the corresponding metrics. But there are some metrics that target your marketing efforts as a whole and aren’t just restricted to a specific campaign.
Some of these helpful metrics are:
- Impressions: This is a direct indicator of your brand’s visibility. It’s a measure of how many people saw your particular ad or post compared to your total audience.
- Click-through Rate: CTR is the percentage of impressions where users clicked on your ad or post. For most campaigns, this is usually low. 4% is considered to be a good CTR and shows that your content is relevant and well-placed.
- MQL to SQL Ratio: MQLs are leads that have the intent to buy. Whereas, SQLs are leads that are ready to be contacted. This ratio tells you how many of your total leads will result in a purchase. It’s important to look at this ratio because it indicates how well your sales and marketing efforts are aligned.
- Cost per Lead: Costs are an important factor to consider in any campaign. The cost per lead indicates how much it costs you to gain a new lead from your campaign. This is a good marketing metric to track ROI. You would want the CPL to be as low as possible for a higher ROI.
- Cost per Acquisition: This metric tells you how much it costs you to turn a lead into a customer. If your CPA is lower than the revenue you get from a customer, you’re on the right path. CPA is a vital metric that helps when allocating budgets to different marketing campaigns.
- Lead-to-Customer Rate: The next step after collecting leads is converting them. This rate indicates how many of your collected leads end up purchasing your products and contributing to your revenue. The higher this rate, the more effective your sales teams are at converting leads into customers.
- Customer Lifetime Value: This is the total amount of revenue you can expect to collect from a single customer over the time period they are with your brand. This includes repeat purchases, supplementary product purchases, and plan upgrades. CLV is closely related to how you engage with your customers and your relationship with them.
- Return on Investment: ROI is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the monetary return you earn from investing in a customer or marketing campaign. You can calculate ROI by dividing your CLV by your CPA.
- Action Completion: This is a simple metric that measures whether users complete a required action. This metric is unique for every campaign and channel. Your required actions can change depending on your goals and marketing channels. For example, you might want users to share a post on social media, so this metric will measure just that.
Social Media Metrics
Social media platforms are a great channel for attracting new customers, raising brand awareness, and pushing content towards your audience. The most important factor to consider in social media campaigns is engagement. You want your audience to interact with your account and the content you post.
This is why most social media metrics are closely related to engagement. The most basic engagement metrics for social media are likes, shares, tags, and comments. These are basic actions common on every social media platform. They indicate how your followers interact with your content.
Reach is the number of times your content is displayed, while Impressions is the number of times your audience views your content. New Follower Growth is the rate at which your follower list is growing in a set period.
Other social media marketing metrics include Traffic and Brand Mentions. Traffic is the number of followers that visit your website. The more engaging your content is, the more people will be interested in learning more and will visit your website. Brand mentions are random mentions of your brand throughout social media. This shows that people are talking about you and is a direct indicator of brand awareness.Â
Website Metrics
When you’ve successfully directed traffic to your social media, it’s time to measure how well your website performs. There are a lot of ways your website can convince visitors to buy your products. These would include engaging content, high-quality images, CTAs, and videos. Hence, it’s vital to track metrics related to the performance of your website.
The simplest website metric is Pageviews. This is the number of views your website gets in a set period of time. It also includes multiple views by the same visitor. Unique Pageviews is the same but counts each visitor just once. Average time on page is the duration a visitor spends on your website. You don’t want a visitor to spend too little or too long. Three minutes is ideal.
Pages per Session tracks how many pages each visitor visits in one session. If they find your website and its content attractive, they’ll likely visit more pages before leaving. Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing a single page without taking any action. You want this to be low, as visitors who view more pages or take action are more likely to buy something.
Track Metrics For Marketing Success
Marketing metrics are your guides as you pave your way through campaigns and the competitive landscape. These metrics ensure that you’re on the right path and help you identify where your marketing campaigns lack or might derail.
To ensure that your analysis of metrics goes without a hitch, you must select the right metrics. Every campaign and marketing channel will have unique metrics, and it’s important to see which are best suited to them.
Which metrics are you tracking right now? Let us know in the comments below!
Featured Image: Hawk eMedia
