27 Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking to Achieve Your Business Goals

What do you think makes your company’s marketing efforts successful? Any idea why your company is doing well or not so well?

If it is not doing well then how are you going to improve and, if doing well then how can you make it better?

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Peter Drucker

What are your marketing KPIs that help you to grow your brand? 

If you are stuck with these questions then don’t worry. In this blog post, I’m going to help you with these questions.

Let’s start by understanding marketing KPIs first.

Read More: Free Resources to Learn Digital Marketing in 2022

What Are Marketing KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are the metrics that are used to track the progress of a specific business goal.

In simple words, KPIs tell you what is working in your marketing campaign and what is not.

It offers you insights into your marketing strategy and helps you to grow your business.

How can KPI tracking help your business achieve its goals?

For many businesses, setting up a goal is a struggle in itself. It’s only because they haven’t identified the metrics they need to achieve their goal. Without knowing how to measure the road to your goals, you won’t be able to analyze the landscape; you just find it hard to figure out where to set your sights.

For successful business growth, you need to understand where you’ve been, where you are, and where you want to go with your appropriate goals.

This is where KPIs help you.

Your marketing KPIs help you collect the right data so that you can observe it and determine your journey’s next step.

The Most Important Marketing KPIs to Track

So after understanding what and why of marketing KPIs now let’s dive into the most important marketing KPIs you need to track to achieve your desired business goals and generate more and more revenue for your company.

SEO KPIs to Track

Organic Traffic

This KPI tells you how many visitors your website got from organic search results.

It is the most important metric of marketing KPIs to track. 

Why track it: It indicates that you have reached the main SEO objective – to reach your target audience.

Where can you track this? – You can easily track this KPI with Google Analytics. Just head to the ‘Audience > Overview’ report, click on the ‘Add Segment,’ and select the ‘Organic Traffic’ field.

Keyword Rankings

At first, keyword rankings won’t seem to be as important as other metrics, but when you look closely you will find how useful it is for measuring your business success.

Keyword ranking is the position of your specific page for a particular query on the Google results page, you should look at the number of keywords & the position of the page, a higher page position means better performance.

Why track it: By using this marketing KPI to track, you can see if your primary keywords are increasing in rank ultimately and your strategy is starting to pay off.

You can use tools like SEMrush Position Tracking Tool to keep track of how your main keywords are ranking on the search engines.

Organic Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR or Click-Through-Rate is a simple metric that tells you how many people click on your page after seeing it on the SERPs (Search engine result pages).

More clicks on your results mean better performance

Why track it: By tracking CTR, you can determine how relevant your title tag and meta description are. If your CTR is low then you can work on these two elements to improve it.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is when a user enters the site and leaves rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site

Bounce rate tells you whether your content is engaging your audience. It is an important metric of marketing KPIs.

It is very helpful in understanding how relevant it is to the search queries that it is ranking for.

Why track it: If you see a high bounce rate, it means that the page isn’t capturing enough attention which means you are missing the opportunity to turn this traffic into conversion.

However, changes in bounce rate are small, so you need to track it regularly to notice improvements.

How to check your site’s bounce rate on Google Analytics by going to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Average Time on Page

The longer a user stays on a page, the more engaged your content is. And the more you can engage your users, the higher chance of converting them into customers.

Why track it: This marketing KPI can help you in measuring the average time users spend on your website. You can use this data to figure out what you need to change in your website content and improve your conversion rate.

You can track this metric in Google Analytics under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Coverage Issues

This marketing KPI is also referred to as ‘Crawl errors’. You can find this on Google Search Console and analyze coverage issues your site is suffering from.

Coverage Issue typically includes:

• 5xx server errors
• 4xx errors 
• Crawl anomalies
• Noindex pages
• Crawled – currently not indexed
• Discovered – currently not indexed
• Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
• Blocked by robots.txt

Why track it: Tracking these issues as a KPI can give you hints about problems that could cause crawling or indexation problems.

You can track this under Index > Coverage in Google Search Console.

Page Speed

How often do you check your website’s loading speed? Is it loading fast or slow? I’m asking because the speed of your site can negatively impact your search rankings and conversions. 

That’s why you need to pay close attention to this metric as your marketing KPI as this metric can change over time for different reasons.

Why track it: By analyzing this marketing KPI you can prevent your users from leaving your site as users hate slow-loading websites.

Read More: Core Web Vitals: How To Measure & Improve Them To Rank Higher

Google Ads KPIs to Track

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS shows how much revenue you are earning on a single dollar spent on Ads. This is one of the most important marketing KPIs to track in Google Ads.

By tracking the ROAS, you can calculate how much revenue you generate via your Google Ads campaign.

Why track it: This metric can allow you to estimate how much money you should invest in each channel to maximize your result.

Doesn’t it sound crucial?

Read More: What is Better: Google Ads vs Facebook Ads

Impressions

This is another important marketing KPI to track in Google Ads. This metric tells you the impressions you are getting with the Google Ads.

Every time your ad displays on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) it’s called an impression.

However, this metric isn’t necessarily an indication of how well your ad is doing, but it shows you how many people are actually seeing it on their search result page.

Why track it: By tracking this marketing KPI you can see if it reaches the relevant audience or not. You should check it weekly for better results.

Conversions

A conversion is when a visitor lands on your website and takes the action you wanted to take them. 

Let’s say, you are hosting an online event and want your customers to attend it. So you write a post in which you explain what they would get after attending the event and ask them to sign up. Now, when someone reads this post and signs up to attend the event – you have a conversion.

Similarly, in Google Ads, this metric shows how many people have clicked on your ads and become your customers.

When people click on your ad they go to a specific landing page that encourages them to take the action you want them to – become a paying customer.

You can skyrocket your sales if you optimize your pages for conversions .

Why track it: This is a crucial marketing KPI to track as it will also give you an idea about how good or bad your ROI on Google Ads is.

Ads Click-Through Rate (CTR)

For your PPC campaign’s success, clicks are a vital metric. This is because people will only click on your ad if they are relevant and useful to them.

By analyzing your ad clicks, you can decide whether to continue or pause your campaigns.

Why track it: This important marketing KPI shows you how many users clicked on your ad after seeing it.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

CPC or cost per click shows you how much one click costs you.

It is a percentage of your total money spent on your campaign to how many times your ads were clicked.

Why track it: This is an important marketing KPI to track. It gives you an idea of how well your campaign is performing and what you need for future planning.

E-Commerce Marketing KPIs to Track

Conversion Rate

In Ecommerce marketing KPIs, conversion rate indicates how many of your audience become your customer by buying your product.

It is simply an overall revenue metric.

Why track it: By tracking this marketing KPI, you can observe what makes people buy from you and what makes them leave your site. This can help you improve your overall marketing strategy.

Gross Margin

Gross margin is the actual profit you have earned after the goods sold.

Why track it: Because knowing how much you actually earn is crucial in every business. By knowing your actual profit you can ensure you are growing and scaling properly.

Average Order Value

Your average order value shows how many customers put your products on their cart and how many of them purchased them.

Why track it: Track your overall AOV and then segment by device type, platform, and traffic sources. Identifying the highest AOV source will give you an idea about where you need to work more or higher ROI.

Read More: How Ecommerce Blogging Can Boost the Profitability of Your Business

Cost Per Acquisition

When I say the cost per acquisition I’m talking about how much it costs to gain a new customer. This includes every step it took to make a customer such as advertising costs, email campaigns, and discounts offered.

Why track it: It will give you an idea of how much effort and money it will take to get more paying customers.

Cart Abandonment Rate

The cart abandonment rate indicates how many customers had intended to buy your product but didn’t buy it. This is one of the important e-commerce marketing KPIs to tracking if you want to understand your customer.

Why track it: This metric will give you insight into how come your customers are showing interest in your product but do not buy. How you can follow up with them and lure them into buying those abandoned products.

Social Media KPIs to Track

Likes

Likes on your social media post reflect the quality of your social media post and how engaging they are.

In simple words – If your social media post is highly attractive, it will get more likes, and vice versa.

Why track it: this is one of the main social media marketing KPIs to track as it indicates that you need to work on your social media content and make them more attractive.

Comments

Being on social media is all about being social.

Interesting social media content can spark a conversation. even if you get negative comments; it is better than having no comment at all.

Good talks, bad talks, and general discussions are helpful in marketing, but silence is death to it.

Why track it: Getting comments on your social media is a sign that your content is hitting the nerve of your audience.

Shares

A share on social media means a lot to any business.

When people share your posts it means your post was so interesting or important that they want to tell their friends about it. And that’s really a great thing for your social media reputation.

Why track it: A good sharing rate tells that you are doing a good job with your posts. This will give you an idea of what kind of post you need more to get popular on social media, and who doesn’t want to.

Brand Mentions

Brand mentions are when people are talking about you and mentioning you in their talks (comments) even when you are not in the room, and also when someone is suggesting your brand to someone else.

Why track it: This social media marketing KPI tells you that you’re doing great! keep doing it!

Active Followers

Active followers are the people who logged in and interacted with your social media profile within the last 30 days.

However, this is not the case for most of the followers. People who like or follow your account aren’t active followers, they just liked and forgot about you. 

Why track it: This marketing KPI indicates that your page isn’t getting new followers means people no longer find your content interesting and relative. You need to work on your social media content strategy. You need to include more interactive and visual forms of content on your social media page.

Email Marketing KPIs to Track

Email Delivery Rate

Just because you have sent emails to 1000 contacts, doesn’t mean it has been delivered to all. 100% deliverability rate is actually impossible.

However, your email delivery rate indicates your marketing emails aren’t delivering as per targeted quantity.

Why track it: Tracking the numbers of emails delivered gives you an idea about your need to have a proper email set up. You might need to see if there is a sudden fall in the deliverability. 

Email Opening Rate

Now after checking whether your emails are delivering at a good rate, the second email marketing KPIs to tracking is how many people opened your emails.

Email opening rate is how many emails were opened compared to the total email sent.

Open rate is arguably one of the most important email marketing KPIs that indicates how your subscribers are reacting to our brand or business emails.

Why track it: This email marketing KPI will give you insight into how well your email subject line is doing and what you need to add to your email to make your subscriber open your emails.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-Through Rate or CTR indicates how many people are clicking on the link you sent in the email. That can be a link to your recent blog update or a seasonal offer.

If you see that people are opening your email but not clicking on the link, then you need to work on your email marketing strategy.

A good CTR is supposed to be above 4 percent.

Why track it: By tracking this metric you can tell if your email content is good or needs work. If your CTR isn’t good enough, you can write catchy content that will drive subscribers to the end and take the action you want them to take – to click on the link.

Unsubscribe Rate

Have you ever unsubscribed to an email from your inbox? I guess yes, everyone has because we just couldn’t find it relevant anymore.

That, the people unsubscribing to your email is called the unsubscribe rate.

It indicates you aren’t serving your consumers what they want or they just simply find it boring.

Why track it: Well, by tracking this email marketing KPI, you can gain insight on how your subscribers are reacting to your emails. This shows that you need to make your subject line more creative and catchy, and also the content.

Forwards

This KPI is a must if you want to know how much value your emails provide to your customers or subscribers.

If people are forwarding your emails that means your email contents are so good that they want to share it with others too. This is really a great thing.

Why track it: If you notice that people were forwarding your email just a while ago but now the rate has suddenly fallen, means you seriously need to improve your email’s content quality.

Finishing Up!

Whoa! you have just got the most important marketing KPIs to tracking that exists. In this insightful journey, you have learned about the metrics of:

SEO KPIs

Paid (Google ads PPC) KPIs

E-commerce Marketing KPIs

Social Media KPIs

Content marketing KPIs and 

Email marketing KPIs

Choose the metric you think is most important to your organization’s growth and track your progress so that you can scale your business revenue to new heights.

And, if you need any kind of help related to the topic, do tell in the comment box below. I’m here to help you. 

Wish you extraordinary growth!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the KPIs for marketing?

Cost per Lead (CPL), Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Cost per Customer Acquisition, and Sales Revenue are some KPIs for marketing. These KPIs help businesses track their growth.

What KPIs should you be tracking?

Some common Key performance indicators to track are – Revenue, sales growth, employee performance, and customer reviews.

What is KPI’s full form?

KPI – Key Performance Indicator.

How are KPIs set in digital marketing?

In digital marketing, you can set KPIs by observing which metrics show the growth of your business. You can set KPIs such as sales revenue, lead generation, net profit, and customer satisfaction.

What is a KPI in social media marketing?

Social media KPIs are the metrics used to determine if a business’s social media marketing strategy is effective. You can use metrics like Likes, Comments, Share as your social media marketing KPIs.