Marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are a crucial part of your marketing strategy. Taking that one step further, being able to measure and interpret your marketing metrics is key in assessing the performance of your marketing and making adjustments as necessary. But which marketing metrics should you measure?
If you’re already feeling like you’re at a loss, it’s probably because there are tons of different metrics and KPIs you could measure. Knowing which ones are actually important to track can be confusing. I’ve got a quick guide to help you understand which marketing metrics you should measure.
What Are Marketing Metrics?
Before I can help you understand the types of metrics you should be measuring, it’s important to understand what metrics even are. Marketing metrics are values measured (usually but numbers or percentages) to showcase the performance of a marketing campaign or other marketing efforts across various marketing channels. With a deeper understanding of marketing metrics, a team can better understand how to efficiently move toward their goals and optimize their marketing channels.
You can grab these metrics yourself or a marketing employee/service provider can gather them for you. Typically, these results are assessed on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. At the end of the year, you can also look at yearly analytics.
We’ll get into the nitty gritty of these later, but some examples of typical types of metrics you can measure may be social media metrics, website traffic, engagement, conversion and click metrics, SEO metrics, and email marketing metrics.
How Do I Know Which Metrics Are Important?
Choosing the appropriate metrics to keep track of will be different for every company, across every niche. Some metrics may be more important to track based on industry benchmarks and standards. The metrics you’re choosing to keep an eye on should also align with the goals and objectives of the company. If you’re looking for growth in certain areas, (i.e. followers, engagement, clicks, etc.) then you are going to want to make sure you consistently measure those metrics.
While these may be important to some in terms of how they’re looking to grow, others may see some of these metrics as vanity metrics. If the metric doesn’t align with how you’re looking to grow your company, then you shouldn’t feel like you need to analyze it. You can use that time and effort elsewhere!
How Do I Measure Marketing Metrics
There are various tools you can utilize to analyze marketing metrics, but these tools may not always be a one-stop-shop. Google Analytics can show you data based on website activity. Most social media sites have “hubs” of their own where business owners can go in to see their analytic reports. If you’re running ads, the sites you’re running ads from (i.e. Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc.) can also show you how well those are performing. The site you send emails through will also typically show you data for every email sent in your email sequence.
Based on all of the analytic reporting you’re able to gather from these sources, you, your team, or an outside agency can make informed decisions about how to adjust marketing strategies for optimal success.
Common Marketing Metrics to Consider
Paid Marketing Metrics
When referring to paid marketing metrics, we’re talking mainly about online marketing in the form of ads. Because you’re paying to produce ads, you are going to want to know if the money you’re investing is getting you the results you’re looking for. Measuring the following metrics will help you better understand your paid advertising.
Conversion
Conversion metrics refer to the number of clicks your ad has that were then converted to become a client- based on what your ad was prompting potential clients to do. This could have led them to joining your email list, getting a freebie, taking a quiz, etc.
Here, you can look at metrics like conversion rate, the total number of conversions, or the click-through rate on your ad.
Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
Return on ad spend refers to the amount of revenue your company earns for every dollar spent on ads. In non-business talk, this just means that it tracks if your ads are worth the money you’re spending on them or not.
SEO & Keyword Marketing Metrics
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the strategies in place to help your business rank higher in search engines. There are plenty of resources online to help you measure website and SEO performance such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush, and more.
To better understand the kind of traffic your website is getting through search, you can measure analytics like number of website visitors, bounce rate, page views, landing page performance, and session duration.
Keywords
Ranking for keywords is an important marketing metric for SEO as well. These are key metrics that will show you what kinds of keywords are ranking higher in searches than others, and which types of keywords your content should aim to include. Keywords.com is a great resource to utilize to track keywords.
You should look for keyword positioning and top inquiries by click to see how your content ranks for keywords.
Social Media Metrics
Social media metrics are probably some of the easiest metrics to keep track of because business accounts on these channels make their analytics easily accessible- even if you know nothing about analytics. Most of the time, your social media will point people directly to your website, so the overlap is important.
Engagement Metrics
Engagement metrics make up the bulk of metrics that are important in analyzing social media. You want your audience to engage with your brand! In order to get them to engage with your brand, you have to have an understanding of what types of content work for your audience and which don’t. You can measure metrics like:
- Top posts based on engagement rates
- Engagement rates (in general)
- Comments and Likes
- Shares
- Saves
Conversions also come into play on social media. Typically, your social content should include a call to action that prompts your audience to do something else like visit a link in your bio, read a blog post, listen to a podcast, etc.
Did anyone click the links you prompted them to click on? Did any of those clicks turn folks into new clients? That’s lead generation, baby! So, you can keep eyes on the number of clicks a page or link may have, click through rates, and conversion rates on those links.
Email Marketing Metrics
If you’ve got a newsletter or marketing funnel, you’re going to want to understand how those emails are performing. Whichever automation tool you use, it should clearly present to you how many subscribers opened your emails, if they clicked on any links you included, if they bought what you’re selling, or even if they unsubscribed all together.
Open & Click-Through Rates
If no one is even opening your emails, that’s probably a tell tale sign you or your team may need to adjust your email marketing strategy. This should tell you whether your subjects and preview text are attention grabbing, and if people are interested in learning more about what you’ve got to share. Simply check out your open rate metrics to gain a better understanding.
Click-Through Rate
It’s one thing to have people opening your emails- you also want them clicking through your emails! If they’re clicking on your CTA’s, this should help in the turn around of turning them into paid customers. Track your click-through rates, conversions rates, and the number of clicks per email to better analyze if these calls to action are actually working.
Need some assistance better understanding marketing metrics and which ones are important for you to keep track of? Set up a vibe check call with me to see if I can effectively help you narrow down what metrics you should be paying closer attention to for growth! Healthy marketing is happy marketing and you deserve both!
