20 essential KPIs you should be tracking to improve your marketing

Looking to learn about KPIs and how you can use them to improve your marketing? Then this article is for you!

What is a KPI in marketing?

KPI stands for key performance indicators.

A KPI in marketing is a measurable value tied to the specific objectives of a marketing campaign.

KPIs help measure marketing effectiveness at the end of a campaign.

KPIs vs marketing metrics

Isn’t KPI the same as marketing metrics?

No, it’s not and you must be able to know the difference between KPIs and marketing metrics.

Marketing metrics are measurable values that include everything from the number of followers of the brand’s page on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok to website traffic, email subscribers, MQL (marketing qualified leads) and the list can continue. It’s everything you can measure at any given time.

The KPI belongs to the marketing metrics category, it is indeed a marketing metric itself.

The difference is that the KPIs are tied to a specific goal of a specific marketing campaign whereas marketing metrics are not tied to a specific goal of a specific marketing campaign.

Every marketing campaign has one or several marketing goals. To measure how effective your campaign was to achieve your goals, select the appropriate KPIs.

How are KPIs used to measure performance in marketing?

Before we talk about how to use KPIs to measure and track performance in marketing campaigns, it’s essential to understand the brand’s business goals and objectives.

You cannot measure progress if you don’t know what progress looks like. Or what success means for your business.

So, if you are the leader of your team, share the brand’s business goals for 2021 with your colleagues.

They could focus on revenue (increase sales), suppliers (replace old suppliers with new, more performant ones), employees (reduce employee turnover), profit (increase profit margin) or market (increase market share).

Once everyone in your team is aware of the business goals they need to achieve, you can move on to the next step: establishing marketing goals.

Here are some of the common marketing goals:

Increase Brand Awareness
Lead generation
Promote new products/services
Target new customers
Increase website traffic
Grow your email list

If your business goal is to increase revenue, what marketing campaigns your team needs to create and run in order to achieve it?

You could consider implementing several marketing campaigns. For example, a marketing campaign targeted at new customers or a marketing campaign targeted at your current customers with the goal of upscaling. What would you like them to do: buy more in quantity or buy products that are more expensive?

The KPIs tied to this particular marketing campaign could be 20% new leads generated or 20% customer conversion rate.

Here are 20 essential KPIs that you should track to measure your marketing performance:

Email open rates
Email click-through rates
Email forward rates
Newsletter signup conversion rate
Social media engagement rate
Social media conversions
New leads generated
Cost per lead
Customer lifetime value
Returning website visitors
Goal completion rate
Marketing revenue attribution
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Landing page conversion rates
Traffic-to-lead ratio
Lead-to-customer ratio
Customer retention
Content downloads
Referral traffic
Net promoter score

1. Email open rates

You worked hard to gain new subscribers to the company’s newsletter, but all is in vain if your emails remain unopened.

Optimize your headlines. Are you sending too many emails per week? If you do, but your subscribers don’t click the unsubscribe button, then they wish to receive your emails but they are too often which leads to email fatigue.

2. Email click-through rates

Your subscribers are opening your emails – that’s great! One of your email campaign goals is to drive website traffic so the email clickthrough rate is an important KPI.

If you note this particular indicator is unsatisfactory (what value did you set for email clickthrough rates?) because the subscribers are not clicking on the links, you should consider the content and the copy. Is the linked content relevant to subscribers?

Re-write the copy: don’t use ‘learn more’ to persuade the subscriber to click the link. Get creative!

3. Email forward rates

The email forward rate is one of the most important KPIs if you are looking to grow a community for the brand.

Opening the email and clicking on the content links inside is one thing, but making your message so relevant to your subscribers that they forward it to someone else is a great achievement.

How many people did your email subscribing campaign convert?

This KPI shows how well you were able to find a match between the brand’s offering and their interests, to speak to their values and show them your solution to their pain points.

They say liking a post is the easiest engagement action that your followers can take whereas commenting is the hardest.

Having followers that take the time to express their opinion in a comment to your post is more valuable than receiving likes. It also tells the algorithm that this piece of content is sparking conversations which prompts it to show your post to more people.

After having said that, let’s also not forget that the algorithm shows your content to a small number of people. Some say it’s under 1%. So this vanity metric is a nice-to-have feature, but it is not essential.

What is instead relevant is how many conversions does your social content drive? How many clicks to the website? How many email subscribers? How many leads does it generate?

7. New leads generated

Generating new leads is paramount for every brand. You need to constantly show your products or services to new leads gently nudging them to the next step in your marketing and sales funnel.

Check this to get your creative juices flowing: 5 fast ways to generate leads on your website

8. Cost per lead

Lead generation is important, but if the cost of acquiring leads is high, you need to take a step back, analyze every stage of the process and see where you can improve it.

The Pirate Funnel may help you pinpoint where your business is losing customers.

9. Customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value is the total revenue you can expect from a customer during the period that they remain a customer. Or simply put: how much are they worth to your brand? For example, Amazon Prime members are worth twice as much as non-Prime shoppers. Prime shoppers spend $1,340 annually, more than twice as much as non-Prime shoppers, who spend $650 annually.

10. Returning website visitors

Having a good amount of website traffic is necessary if you want to run ads, show up in organic search results and gain email subscribers.

Your website is owned media, it’s where you control the content – your brand is not at the mercy of any social media algorithms. It’s important to measure the number of new visitors your website gets every month. But equally important is to track how many visitors return to your site.

Returning visitors tell you that your website is a relevant and valuable resource for them. It’s how your brand stays top of mind. It’s also easier to convert returning visitors to leads and then customers.

11. Goal completion rate

Marketers set a goal for every marketing campaign they run. The goal completion rate is a KPI that measures the number of people that complete a specific marketing goal.

How many people subscribed to the brand’s newsletter? How many people have signed up for your freemium offer? It is an important indicator of your brand’s ability to influence to get from the awareness stage to the consideration stage in your marketing funnel.

12. Marketing revenue attribution

Every marketer wants to know how much profit their campaigns have generated. The marketing revenue attribution KPI does exactly that: it tracks and credits the company’s marketing efforts with the generated revenue.

If you are running mobile campaigns, marketing revenue attribution can prove to be a challenge. There are platforms to help you out, it’s only a matter of finding the right one for you.

13. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Do you know how much it costs your company to acquire a new customer?

As a business person and a leader, it’s one of the most important numbers you should be aware of. This KPI can be calculated by dividing all costs spent on acquiring new customers (advertising spend, the marketing and sales department salary costs) by the number of customers. Now that you know what your company’s CAC is, if it’s too high, you can start looking for ways to lower it.

14. Landing page conversion rates

Your team has designed a beautiful landing page for your company’s latest offering of products or services. And you are running a campaign to send leads to that landing page with the goal of converting them to customers. The landing page conversion rate KPI shows the performance of the landing page.

If the page has a poor conversion rate, analyze it to see if the graphics and the copy can be improved.

15. Traffic-to-lead ratio

This KPI tells you how many of your website visitors convert to leads. First, you need to establish what exactly means a lead for your brand.

What do you want your website visitor to do? Depending on what your company offers through its website, it could be anything from a newsletter subscribing, downloading a PDF paper, answering a survey or registering for a 7-day free product subscription.

If this ratio is unsatisfactory, one of the main questions you should ask yourself is ‘Are you attracting the right people to your website?’

16. Lead-to-customer ratio

Now that you have established the traffic-to-lead ratio, the next step is to establish the lead-to-customer ratio.

From the total number of leads, how many convert into paying customers? How many push the Buy button? What are you doing to convince them to become customers? Are your leads qualified? A qualified lead is someone who could become a potential customer to you, based on criteria and identifying information that they have freely provided.

17. Customer retention rate

The customer retention rate indicates the brand’s ability to serve and satisfy its customers so well over a given period of time that they have become loyal.

It’s every brand’s dream: customers that are happy to continue to do business. If this KPI is high, then you are doing something right. You may also consider designing a brand ambassador program as your next step. We all know that acquiring new customers is more expensive than retaining existing customers.

18. Content downloads rate

Downloadable content is usually hosted on a landing page as a lead magnet. It helps marketers establish if the content is relevant to the page visitors and if the copy is effective. The visitor who downloaded the content is now a lead and the brand can begin a conversation which could eventually result in a sale.

19. Referral traffic

Directing people to your website is hard work and it usually takes 6 to 12 months to see results for some companies or 3 months for other companies depending on the industry.

Referral traffic is one of those results and describes the people who come to your website from other sites, without searching for your brand on Google. It could be a link on your social media post, or in a blog published by one of your clients. If they are linking back to your website it means your content was helpful to them which in turn helps your brand increase awareness and domain authority.

20. Net promoter score

When we are satisfied with a product or service, we recommend it to our friends and family. It’s one of the most powerful ways a brand can attract customers – word-of-mouth marketing.

The Net Promoter Score assesses the customers’ overall satisfaction and calculates the likelihood of recommending a company or its products.

5 fast ways to generate leads on your website

Generating leads is one of the most important responsibilities of marketers in every industry. Without leads, there are no sales, and without sales, the business doesn’t survive.

So how do you generate leads fast using your most important resource: your website?

5 fast ways to generate leads on your website

Giveaways
Discounts
Downloads
Gamification
Referral programs

Let’s break the list down and see how you can leverage every one of them to get leads for your business. If you’re looking for other ways to get leads, here are two ideas for you to explore: 3 efficient lead-generation tools and conversational marketing.

1. Giveaways

Giveaways are a great way to generate leads on your website.

What should you do to generate leads through giveaways?

You do a brainstorming session with your marketing and sales team and come up with a few ideas of what your prospects would like to receive in exchange for their email.

To turn prospects (potential customers fitting certain criteria) into leads (prospects sharing contact information with your company), your giveaway has to comply with a set of requirements.

First of all, your giveaway can be one of your products or services. If that’s not possible, your giveaway can be anything that speaks to your brand values and is in line with your customers’ interests.

Here’s an example:

Beauty and makeup brands give away beauty products, but they could also give away a makeup session with a renowned makeup professional or a skincare course with a dermatologist.

Once you have decided upon the prize you are going to give your prospects, it’s time to create a dedicated landing page on your website.

The architecture of your landing page should include the following elements:

An eye-candy or an appealing image of your prize;
Powerful headline;
Enticing body copy;
Description of your prize;
How your prospects would benefit from your prize, when applicable;
Contact information form for your lead’s name and mail address;
CTA button;
One or two questions you would like your lead to answer (refrain from including too many questions or asking for too much information);
The time period over which your giveaway will take place (at least 7 days);
When and how you will choose the winner/s;
How you will announce and contact the winner.

screenshot from amyporterfield.com

2. Discounts

If your product is of high value or running giveaways is not included in your brand strategy (Louis Vuitton does neither sales nor giveaways for example), you can still generate leads fast by offering your product at a discount price.

It’s a way to attract prospects who didn’t buy your product because of its price. Now they get the opportunity to buy a high-value product and become a recurring customer.

Your discount price campaign landing page should include:

An enticing main image of your product or hero (lead);
Your discount price clearly communicated;
The product carrying the discounted price;
The net price (the price the customer will pay after the discount has been applied);
Description of your product/service;
Benefits of your product/service;
Contact information form for your lead’s name and mail address;
CTA button;
The time period over which your discount price campaign will take place (at least 7 days);
Any other details your lead should be aware of.

3. Downloads

Generating leads with downloads is one of the most widespread ways to send prospects to the bottom of your company’s sales funnel.

But it’s not the easiest. Before creating the landing page, your copy team and your graphics team need to work together to deliver a PDF file that your leads will be prompted to download. We see this type of lead generation at tech companies like Hubspot and Adobe or research companies like Gartner and PwC.

Don’t be discouraged! Any company, no matter how small, can offer relevant information for its leads to download. It’s a matter of having an in-depth understanding of what your customers need from you.

A great benefit of download campaigns is that they are not time-limited as are the giveaways and discount campaigns. Your company can generate leads throughout the entire year.

Your download landing page should include:

An enticing main image of your product or hero (lead);
Description of your PDF;
How does your PDF file help your leads (benefits);
Powerful headline;
Download button;
Contact information form.

screenshot from growwithward.com

4. Gamification

While giveaways, discounts and download campaigns also support brand awareness because they foster a certain level of engagement, gamification campaigns increase lead engagement tenfold.

Again, it’s not one of the easiest ways to generate leads, but it’s more powerful than the first three.

What is gamification in marketing?

Gamification marketing is increasing engagement by incorporating gaming principles into your campaign. Gamification is psychology-based and taps into your lead’s reward centre of their brain.

Essential key points that you should take into consideration when developing your landing page:

Bright and attractive colours to pique the curiosity of your lead;
The game should be simple enough to understand and complex enough to stimulate the lead’s innate competitiveness;
Invite your leads to complete the contact information form only after they’ve entered the game and are eager to finish it;
Refrain from making the game too long;
Give your players incentives to move on to the next stage by unlocking rewards or achievements.

Here’s a great example called Wheel of Security, a lead-generation game developed by Juniper Network:

5. Referral programs

Referral programs work splendidly in two ways: they delight your customers and provide them with a mechanism to send you new leads.

Basically, your existing customers are doing your work for you. But you need to provide them with the right tools.

Your referral program landing page should include:

An enticing image;
Headline and body copy;
Clearly list what your customer will get by sharing your brand or product with their friends;
Clearly state what their friends will get;
Allow your customers to share your offer easily;
CTA button.

screenshot from pastaevangelists.com

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3 essential strategies to increase website traffic

Looking to increase website traffic? Leverage the power of these 3 essential strategies:

Blogging
Social media
Influencers

1. How to leverage the power of blogging to generate website traffic

To generate website traffic you need content and blogging is the most effective way to create content.

Is blogging easy?

No, it’s not, but companies with blogs generate on average 67% more leads per month than companies that don’t blog.

source: hubspot.com

It is a well-known fact that Google loves fresh content so companies that publish new content consistently have a lot to gain and I’m not talking about traffic alone.

Successful companies like HubSpot or Salesforce have grown into content publishing powerhouses. They put out several blog articles a day filled with valuable insights, how-to’s and other recommendations for marketers and sales professionals.

Companies like these two either have a 5-6 writer in-house team or hire freelance writers. Another solution is to welcome guest posts. No matter which option they went with, they have a well-planned editorial calendar for at least 6 months in advance.

It’s totally understandable if your company cannot publish five articles a day, not every company has the human and financial resources of Hubspot and salesforce.

You can start by publishing one article per day. You don’t have a content writer on your team yet? No problem!

Find industry experts or influencers in your niche who are looking to increase their personal brand and invite them to contribute guest blogs.

It’s a win-win situation: contributors boost their visibility and reputation, and your blog benefits from increased traffic from prospects you could turn into leads then customers.

Now that you have writers generating content, it’s time to ensure your published content shows up in Google search results and gets clicked on. In other words: it’s SEO time!

SEO recommendations to get your content to show up in Google search results and get clicked on

1.Keywords with high search volume vs keywords with low search volume

Before jumping into writing content, Nadya Khoja, Chief Growth Officer at Venngage and experienced B2B marketer recommends marketers to determine the search intent of their B2B audience.

Nadya says marketers shouldn’t choose keywords based solely on search volume. When it comes to B2B, marketers should choose keywords and terms that are first and foremost relevant to their audience even if they have a lower search volume.

“Popular searches in your industry will attract more B2C consumers, whereas focused keywords that have a higher value, but a lower search volume, usually fall in the B2B realm.”, says Nadya.

2. Put honey in your titles

The most important element of your blog article is not the contents, but the headline. If the headline is not attractive enough, no one will read the contents.

Think of the headline as honey: it’s sweet and nutritious and bears cannot resist but eat it whenever they find it.

What does a “sweet” headline look like?

A compelling headline:

offers a solution to the reader’s problem;
includes an engaging qualifier (i.e.: smart, amazing, easy-to-implement, top, essential, the latest etc);
is clear on what solution does the article provide (i.e.: recommendations, insights, takeaways, tips, trends etc);
provides a number (i.e.: 7 recommendations, 25 takeaways).

To help you get really good at writing enticing headlines, use Headline Studio, a Chrome tool that scores your headlines and teaches you how to optimize them.

3. Serve readers with a 3-course meal type of content

Health experts recommend never eat until you are full, eat until you are no longer hungry.

It’s sound advice to prevent overeating related health issues, but that doesn’t apply to content.

Your goal as a content writer is to serve the reader with a 3-course meal type of content.

This type of content satisfies the reader’s appetite in such a way that they don’t need to look anywhere else for delicious content.

It is relevant to the reader and provides valuable information in various forms: how-to, top, round-up, case study, interview or original research.

When the content is valuable, it will get included as a source in other pieces of content and therefore attract further traffic.

2. How to use social media to generate website traffic

For most websites, Google is the first source of paid and organic traffic. Social media comes in second, with Facebook driving the most traffic for business.

Depending on your business, the second social media platform is either LinkedIn or Instagram.

And you should also check out Pinterest because according to the latest reports, each pin can drive up to 2-page visits and 6 pageviews and lasts up to one week compared with Twitter and Facebook whose updates last for 24 minutes and 90 minutes respectively.

Going back to Facebook, what should you write in your post to get your followers to click on the link and visit your page?

Never ever post the link with no copy and expect your audience to click through to your page. It’s unprofessional!

What you need to do is to write a compelling copy that piques the interest of your audience.

Use questions to challenge their assumptions and stoke their curiosity then direct them to your link to find the answers.

3. How to generate website traffic with influencer marketing

The latest stats say influencer marketing strategies focused on branding or engagements generate 8x ROI and according to 71% of marketers, the quality of customers and traffic from influencer marketing is better than other sources.

Influencer marketing is powerful but how should you leverage the power of influencers to generate website traffic?

Here are the main dos and don’ts.

Don’t limit the influencer to sharing a photo holding your product. It’s unprofessional and most of the time it doesn’t work! Yes, I’m repeating myself to grab your attention.

Do have your team and the influencer brainstorm ideas for creative and fun campaigns. The influencer should fall in love with your product and find ways to convey this feeling to their followers.

Which strategy are you using to increase website traffic?

Share in the comments!

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20 essential KPIs you should be tracking to improve your marketing (updated for 2021) Part 1