Key performance indicators (KPIs) help brands understand their overall long-term performance. As digital marketers, it is our job to ensure we’re meeting these touchpoints as potential customers wander through the sales funnel. Given today’s technology, it’s actually possible to know virtually every bit of information about your customers as they learn about your brand, but sifting through all that data can be overwhelming at best (and futile at worst). You need to know which KPIs really matter. That’s why, in this blog, we will discuss eight digital marketing KPIs that you can’t ignore.
Table of Contents
1. Cost Per Action (CPA)
Cost per action gives you a sense of your overall dollars spent on getting customers to take a predefined action, such as signing up for your newsletter, downloading a white paper, or making a purchase.
If your company is trying to achieve conversions, you should be tracking your CPA because it can help you focus on the platforms and methods most likely to give you a healthy return rate.
2. Inbound Link-Building
Inbound link-building is critical to an overall successful SEO strategy. It helps drive traffic to your site from other websites. Many tools can help you determine where your current inbound links are coming from and how many there are so you can engage with your audience while simultaneously building your site’s authority.
3. Leads
You need to know how many leads you’re generating each month, which can be anything from someone signing up for a free trial to a person creating an account on your site (and so much more). If you’re not generating a fair amount of qualified leads, you probably need to pivot your strategies and explore other marketing tactics or channels to attract the right customers to your brand.
4. Website Traffic
Measuring your site’s traffic is one of the most basic KPIs. It helps you discover whether your website is serving its primary job as your brand’s all-day-every-day ambassador. Be sure to check out the trends on your site’s monthly traffic report to see if you might need to work on any areas of opportunity. Focus on elements such as:
- Visitors per page
- Visitors per product category
- Visitors by price
5. Visits Per Channel
Driving traffic to your site is a definite goal, but where are these visitors coming from? You need to know this detail to figure out which campaigns are most attractive to your audience. It’s important to track visits per channel to ensure you’re investing your money in the places that get your brand the most attention.
6. Average Time on Page
Getting people to your site is one thing; keeping them there is a whole different situation. If most of your visitors leave as soon as they arrive, the search engines might assume your site isn’t useful or valuable to its users. This can cause you to experience a downgrade in page rank.
If people are leaving your pages as soon as they get there, examine your ads and content to see if there’s a disconnect between what you’re saying and what people think they’re going to be learning about when they get there. Also, make sure your page speed and mobile-friendliness are optimized so viewers don’t get frustrated by factors you can easily remedy.
7. Conversion Rate
If you’re driving a sales-based campaign, your conversion rate is incredibly important. It’s determined by dividing your conversion over the total number of visitors to your site. Sure, heavy site traffic can make your campaign appear successful on the surface, but if people aren’t converting into paying customers, it’s not doing as well as it may seem.
You need to know your conversion rate to focus your campaign on the people who are most likely to convert when you target your messages toward them.
8. Cost Per Lead
Yes, you need to know how many leads you’re acquiring, but you also need to know how much you’re paying for each lead. This KPI focuses on the amount of money you’re spending to gain each new customer. Knowing this information, you can see if your budget aligns with your future customers’ eventual action as they learn about your brand. From there, you can learn if the effort and expense are really worth the dollars you’re spending to attract those leads.
In the world of digital marketing, there are many KPIs that are important to the overall health and success of a campaign. If you keep these eight important KPIs in mind, you’ll be on your way to better understanding both your customers and the money you’re spending to boost your bottom line.
