5 digital marketing KPIs worth tracking
How’s your marketing strategy’s performance stacking up? To find out, you need to track your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). After all, every organization has goals – and marketing KPIs help to break those goals down into achievable steps.
Be warned, though: Not all KPIs are created equal. There are plenty of popular metrics that marketers insist on tracking because they look good. But these kinds of KPIs don’t necessarily help your business achieve its overall objectives.
How do you ensure your KPIs are meaningful to your organization? Make them S.M.A.R.T:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timely
Need a starting point? Below, we’re listing marketing KPIs that most businesses should track. Keep reading to figure out which KPIs make sense for you.
Marketing KPIs you should be tracking:
1. Conversion rate
What percentage of your audience is completing your desired objectives? You can measure the conversion rate of just about anything – think digital ads, your blog post’s call-to-action, whitepaper downloads, Instagram Stories and more.
Conversion rates are even more handy when you’re performing A/B tests. Which version of that email newsletterperformed better? Which ad format does your audience prefer? Your conversion rates will help crack the case.
If your measurement tools don’t do it for you, here is one easy way to calculate your conversion rate:
Conversion rate = (conversions/total visitors) * 100%
2. Unique website visitors
Your website is the “hub” of your digital strategy (a.k.a. where all the important action goes down). Therefore, you want to attract as many visitors as possible. Tracking your unique website visitors will help you analyze everything from your SEO strategy to your social media content. Where do most of those visitors come from? Are there trends in when and where on your site visitors are showing up? Knowing this information can help you optimize your content and distribution plans.
3. Referral traffic
Referral traffic is another major indicator of how visitors find your website in the first place.
According to Google, “Referral traffic is the segment of traffic that arrives on your website through another source, like through a link on another domain.”
Are you getting a lot of visitors through backlinks on some other brand’s blog? There’s a good chance your brands share target audience members. This is an opportunity to scope out the competition and gain a better understanding of your audience’s interests.
4. Organic traffic (vs paid traffic)
Are most of your visitors finding you through ads, or is the majority of your traffic organic? Of course you want your ads to perform well – that’s what you’re paying for, right? But if you’re putting in tons of effort into your organic SEO strategy, it needs to pay off too.
Which keywords does your website rank for? Which ones would you like to rank for? Take these questions into consideration the next time you take a look at your organic traffic KPIs.
5. Social media engagement
Is your social media strategy paying off with real-life results? One way you can tell is through your engagement levels. Is your content getting more likes, comments, clicks and shares than ever? Or has your engagement taken a nosedive? Whatever the case may be, use KPIs like total engagement and engagement rate per post to figure out if your social strategy needs an upgrade. (We can help with that, by the way.)
Once you’ve narrowed down your KPIs, don’t forget the most important part: actually tracking them! After all, that’s the beauty of digital marketing – data can help shed a lot of light on what you’re doing right (and wrong). With KPIs on your side, you have the power to make informed marketing decisions.
Learn more about measuring digital marketing success: