There are multiple sources of information about dos and not-to-dos in digital marketing, and many companies, not just in marketing, have begun to realize that it's much harder to succeed in the digital space than in the physical world. It is much easier to open a shop on Broadway and watch how people walk in, then to open a shop online and see no traffic at all. Shop on Broadway instantly gives you an authority of your business, but without a Doman Authority for your website, every business will struggle. The complexity of modern digital marketing leaves no chances for companies and people without the proper knowledge to succeed online.
As COVID-19 pushed multiple businesses to grow their businesses online from all industries digital Key Performance Indicators(KPI) have become absolutely important and impossible to be ignored. Otherwise business online becomes too tricky and risky. Like every car driver needs to know how to drive and rules of road traffic in order not to crash, any web-based company needs to know how to navigate the digital space and web in order not to crash as well. A successful digital marketing campaign becomes equal to revenue, and therefore proper management in digital marketing has become the only way to save your operations, survive, maintain profits and thrive for many years going forward.
In this Guide, we have created an introductory roadmap through Key Marketing KPIs that will help your businesses to better understand the digital environment and make more comprehensive decisions based on marketing performance. We hope it will help you to design a proper Digital Marketing Plan around Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and to track your marketing results.
Exclusive PR Solutions highlights 4 critical digital assets and metrics which should be a priority for any organization or business:
1. Lead Generation
2. Website traffic
3. SEO
4. Paid Ads and Social media
Are you ready to dive in? First, we will start with the leads, as leads can help you to quickly make some revenue...
1. Lead Generation KPIs
To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of your lead generation channels, you should take into account:
New leads that you acquired during last month: a person or a company who was interested in booking a demo, buying your product, creating an account on your website, or leaving info via the contact form. How to measure: you can use different software that can help you to track leads and collect data about them.
Qualified leads: the number of qualified leads shows if the traffic that you generate consists of targeted leads, or you mistargeted and brought the wrong audience that cannot become paying customers. Leads that can be your potential clients are the focus, and they can be divided into:
MQL (Marketing-Qualified Leads – leads evaluated by your marketing team and fit properly targeted audience)
SAL (Sales-Accepted Leads – leads accepted by the Sales team to work with)
SQL (Sales-Qualified Leads - leads that considered to be prospective customers)
How to measure? Categorize your points with the help of CRM software using tags and dates to control the exact number of qualified points per specified period.
Cost Per Lead (CPL): CPL shows how much the company pays to acquire a new lead.
How to measure? Calculate all the money spent on marketing activities divide by the number of monthly acquired leads.
Cost Per Conversion: Measures how much a company pays to acquire a paying client (usually 2% of leads turn into a client), and if it is lower, then you need to change the targeted audience in your marketing campaign.
How to measure? It depends on lead conversion time and usually takes about 1-3 months, and for different marketing channels, it should be calculated separately.
Time of Conversion: Time which it takes the lead to become a client.
How to measure? With the help of a CRM system, you can track the average time between becoming a lead and converting into a paying client.
Retention Rate: The number of returning customers, which shows if your clients are well-engaged and devoted to your product.
A quick formula to calculate it: Retention Rate = ((CE-CN)/CS)) X 100
CE = number of customers at the end of a period
CN = number of new customers acquired during a period
CS = count of clients at the start of a period
2. WEBSITE KPIs
The KPIs for your website-related marketing should help you to increase the conversion rate and traffic to your website.
Monthly traffic: Shows the number of users who visit your website. Usually, you must track which part of your website is the most interesting to your clients and the most active, who your visitors are, where they come from.
How to measure? Google Analytics can help you to track the monthly traffic of all your web pages and can provide a hint on how to increase this traffic.
New vs Returning visitors: You can measure if your audience is well-engaged by calculating the percentage of returning visitors.
How to measure? Google Analytics provides insightful data about your new and returning visitors, dates, most active pages, and many other data sets.
Visits per channel: Gives you an overview of which traffic source is more effective for your marketing campaign bringing more traffic to your website. How to measure: Use Google Analytics to track website visits per channel.
Average Time on Page: Shows how much time a visitor spends on the page and if the content is exciting for him. If lots of visitors leave after opening your website – search engines will reduce your website authority in Google.
How to measure? Use Google Analytics shows the average time visitors spend on each page of your website.
Website Conversion Rate: Millions of visitors can come to your website, but if they are not converted into leads, there is no sense in directing paid traffic to this site.
How to measure? Google Analytics helps to get an overview of every page’s conversion rate.
The conversion rate for CTA (call-to-action): CTA rate helps you to measure the outcome of your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns on specific pages of your website.
How to measure? Once again - Google Analytics can track every single click on your CTAs.
Pages Per Visit: It shows if it is easy enough to navigate through your website and if visitors like your content or if bounced after opening your site.
How to measure? Google Analytics Behaviour tool will show how many pages an average visitor looks per session.
3. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) KPIs
Organic traffic brings companies the most profitable lead channels, and with proper SEO metrics, you can acquire highly targeted leads.
Inbound Links: indicates the number of inbound leads that lead to your website, the more links the better it is, as they indicate that visitors share your content and that you provide interesting and shareable information, and that may signal that you are an expert in your field.
How to measure? Moz, Alexa, or SEMrush tools can help you find all inbound links to your website.
Organic Search Traffic: Shows the number of visitors from search engine results like Google, Bing, etc. Such traffic is significant as it’s free and generates targeted leads.
How to measure? Google Analytics and Bing SEO Analyzer can provide you with desirable statistics.
New leads from organic search: It allows you to understand the performance of your SEO strategy.
How to measure? Such marketing analytics tools as Marketo, Hubspot, Appsflyer and Google Analytics or professional CRMs can show you how many leads came from the organic source.
Conversions from organic search: Indicates how many leads from organic search convert into paying clients. If the conversion rate is low, then you use wrong keywords that are confusing for the audience, so you should change them for others.
How to measure? Many tools such as Marketo, Hubspot, Appsflyer can help to analyze keywords and choose the best one for your products or services.
Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority(DA): Helps to measure how your website appears among positions in organic search results in Google, Bing and other search engines.
How to measure? Use Moz’s browser extension to check the page’s authority of each page on your website or use Exclusive PR Solutions Free SEO tool.
Google Page Rank: Based on the quality and quantity of inbound links that help Google to analyze the importance of your web pages.
How to measure? You can use a page rank checker.
Keywords: To appear on the first page of Google, you should use keywords that are in the top 10 SERP (search engine results page) as people rarely check results that appear on the 2nd page (1.0% CTR for position #11 VS 32.5% CTR for position #1. At the end of each month, you should check keyword ranking and conversion rates for each of them.
How to measure? Use SEO software from Exclusive PR Solutions or other companies.
4. PAID ADS AND SOCIAL MEDIA KPIs
Many companies waste vast amounts of money for paid ads as they haven’t set any KPI’s and do not know how to track results. Setting clear goals and measuring the outcome will help to invest the company’s budget to get more targeted leads, which will be converted into clients.
Leads & Conversions: You should monitor these KPIs and calculate as the percentage of overall results to have a better overview of your non-paid marketing performance.
How to measure? Google AdWords will show your results in your Google Analytics account.
Social Media Traffic: You can measure it as a percentage of all visits on your website.
How to measure? Google Analytics, AppsFlyer, and other software may provide you free reports about all your website’s traffic sources.
Leads and Conversions: Social media can be a good source of leads, therefore it is essential to track the monthly amount of leads that come from your social media accounts and become your clients.
How to measure? You can mark leads in your CRM tool with a “social media” tag so you can see how many of them convert to clients.
Audience Size and Engagement Rate: You need to track the number of followers in each of your accounts, check if it is increasing, and try to engage new people over time. Also, it is imperative to check what is the percentage of followers who are actively engaged with your posts (shares, likes, clicks, etc.).
How to measure? To check the number of your followers, open your profile and marketing tools like Moz, HubSpot, Buzzsumo, Google Analytics, AppsFlyer, and other software will show you the engagement rate of your audience.
Social Media Mentions: They reflect how often people talk about your brand in social media.
How to measure: You can set up a mention tracking tool (adjust parameters and keywords) and get accurate reports.
Social Media Marketing ROI: You can calculate your entire social media marketing budget, time, costs, etc. and the number of new clients, increased awareness, and social proof or social index.
How to measure? Social Media ROI can’t be managed only in numbers as it gives you much more than leads. It brings awareness to your brand.
Now you see how more organized and structured KPIs can help you to better understand your marketing activities and reach the goal, or increase the number of leads, gain awareness, and save your budget! And don’t forget that only measurable KPIs can be improved with a clear action plan.
April 20, 2020