The Most Important Digital Marketing KPIs You Should Track To Increase Sales

Every digital business deploying digital marketing strategies to grow its revenue must be able to track different quantifiable metrics to understand the pitfalls and successes of its marketing campaigns. Without this vital knowledge, marketers cannot optimize their strategies to improve the ROI. Key Performance Indicators or KPIs help businesses to analyze each metric that matters the most to the company. By reviewing the data, marketers can identify the weak points in their strategies and remedy them through improvements to achieve the desired results. The KPIs for every company depending on their goals. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. While choosing the right KPIs is crucial, it is also important to know which KPIs are not worth tracking. Any metric that doesn’t add value to the marketing strategy or impact the bottom line positively or negatively, can most likely be ignored to save resources and time.  

Digital marketing KPIs are measurable benchmarks that are tied to the digital marketing strategy. They include data such as conversion rates, sales revenue, website traffic, customer retention rates, marketing qualified leads, etc. These KPIs help companies to measure and analyze performance and the downward impact of these metrics on the entire organization. Some metrics require more resources, hence, it is always advisable to plan and organize the prioritizes ahead. Most platforms, including CMS and CRM software, offer analytics that is easy to track and analyze. For example, tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, and more allow the companies to see where their customers are coming from, the cost per acquisition, cost per lead, bounce rate, average time spent by users, etc. These valuable insights can inform marketers which strategies are working well and which are ineffective. This way the unprofitable parts of the marketing strategy can be dropped while only focusing on the profitable ones and enhancing them over time. 

Important digital marketing KPIs that companies must track:

Depending on the marketing channels being targeted, the KPIs will vary. The main categories of digital marketing KPIs are:

• Lead Generation
• Social media 
• Paid advertising
• Website metrics
• SEO

Within these categories, the most important digital marketing KPIs that businesses must track to increase sales are:

Lead Generation

Monthly new prospects– This metric helps companies to track the number of new leads/prospects acquired every month. A new prospect can be anyone who signs up for a free trial or set up an account on the website. The number of prospects can be improved by investing more in ad campaigns, SEO-optimised and personalized content, trial period offers, and loyalty programs.
Qualified leads per month– Qualified leads are essentially prospects who have a high likelihood to convert into a customer. Monitoring the number of qualified leads enables companies to know if they are targeting the right prospects. Most organizations use CRM software to manage and categorize their list of prospects. A highly targeted prospect list can help marketers to identify the right target audience and categorize them into Marketing qualified leads (MQL), Sales-accepted leads (SAL), Sales qualified leads (SQL).
Cost per lead– There is an inherent cost related to every lead that a company acquires. The cost per lead encapsulates the time, resources, and money spent on finding, identifying, and tracking new leads. When combined with cost per conversation KPIs, it can help marketers know whether the multitude of marketing activities are profitable or not.
Cost per conversion– The cost per conversion metric is the cost of converting qualified leads into paying customers. To calculate the conversion cost, each marketing channel must be monitored separately. Ideally, the cost per conversion must be greater than CLTV, otherwise, the strategies are not generating any profit.
Average time of conversion– This KPI indicates the time required by the sales and marketing teams to convert leads into customers. The average time of conversion should exceed too long, as it may cause the lead to lose interest in the product or service and they might turn to the competitors. Most CRM tools have features that allow organizations to calculate the average time of conversion. To improve this KPI, companies must focus on time-sensitive discount offers and provide helpful guidance throughout the buying process. 
Customer retention rate– Perhaps one of the most important metrics to track, CRR gives organizations a true picture of whether their marketing and sales effort keep customers engaged enough to make repeat purchases. An excellent end-to-end user experience and customer experience will ensure that customers keep coming back. CRR strategies ensure that the company doesn’t waste precious resources by focusing only on the acquisition, as the cost of acquisition always tends to be much higher than the cost of retention. 
Net promoter score– This KPIs is used to identify how likely a customer is to recommend the product or service to their friends and family. Recommendations are helpful (and free) in building a customer base and improving customer loyalty. Tracking this metric can help companies identify and categorize the customers’ advocacy levels.

Social media

Traffic– Monitoring this social media KPI can help marketers to understand the importance of various channels to the company’s website traffic. Tools like Google Analytics can provide essential information about social media visitors who visit the website. Effective social media campaigns can peak user interest, generate a following, and help convert users into leads and customers.
Engagement rate– A social media engagement refers to the number of likes, comments, and shares that a post is receiving on the platform. Low engagement means that the content of the post does not resonate well with the target audience. High engagement rates can help grow online audiences organically. Analytical tools can be used to track which posts are ranking high on customer engagement and which are not. With this information, marketers can tweak the content to attract better responses from their followers. 
Click through rate– CTR shows the percentage of users who clicked on a link in the post after seeing it. It is important because it tells marketers how much of the audience is driven to the website assets. CTR is an indication of how many users are actually interested in buying a product or service.
Leads and conversions– Social media platforms are the perfect tools to build brand awareness. However, it also serves as a profitable lead generation tool. Monitoring the number of monthly leads and conversions from social media platforms can help to assess the channel’s efficiency in the overall marketing efforts.

Paid advertising

Click through rate– CTR is an important metric as it gives an overview of the efficiency of the PPC advertising campaigns. Higher CTR indicates that the ads are compelling enough to attract customers or at least pique their interest. To increase the relevancy of the PPC ads, teams must focus on improving the ad copy, use high-ranking keywords, implement call-to-action buttons and landing pages, make changes to the ad design, etc.
Customer acquisition cost– CAC through paid ads on Facebook can be expensive and it’s a very important KPI to monitor. Acquisition costs are always higher because companies spend a lot of money and resources to generate awareness, engage them for a certain period of time, and onboard them as leads. CAC has a high impact on marketing budgets and hence companies must monitor it closely.
Cost per conversion– Cost per conversion is the amount spent on every conversion that happens through the PPC ad. This is important because a lower CPC means a higher return on investment. This metric reflects the actual profitability of paid campaigns.
Conversion rate– To truly optimize the ad budget, marketers must track the conversion rate of the ad campaign. It informs the company how relevant their offer is to the target audience. The most relevant ad gets the highest conversion rates.

Website metrics

Monthly website traffic– Monitoring monthly website traffic can help to identify the pages that have the highest conversion rates and optimize the pages that have lower visits. Analytical tools can help identify where the traffic is coming from, at what time, and what is the average time spent by users on the website.
Bounce rate– Bounce rate indicates visitors who land on the website but immediately leave the site. Bounce rate could be a signal of poor site performance, bad user journey, average web design, or sub-par content that does not resonate with the visitors. Understanding bounce rates can help companies to improve their website and every element in it.
Conversion rate– This KPI tells about the website’s ability to persuade visitors to take the action. A low conversion rate could mean that it’s time to make improvements to the website.

SEO

Organic traffic– This SEO metric shows the number of monthly website visits that come through search engine results from Google, Bing, etc. It includes KPIs such as total visits, unique visitors, organic traffic, website visitors, traffic sources, page views per session, top pages, etc.
Domain and Page authority–  Domain authority is a measure of how much authority the search engines attribute to your website. Page authority is a similar type of measurement but on a page-by-page basis. These metrics help organizations to know how well the website and the pages rank in comparison to their competitors. 
Backlinks– Backlinks are an important factor in search engine optimization. This KPI lets businesses track how many other sites are linking to the site. It also helps in improving the domain authority of the website. When combined with the search traffic KPIs, backlinks directly affect SERP rankings and web traffic.
Keyword ranking– This digital marketing KPI will tell marketers where the site ranks for the most valuable keywords and phrases. Tracking changes in ranking over time can help to optimize the strategies as it enables companies to understand what is working and what isn’t with the SEO efforts.

Final Thoughts

Digital marketing KPIs must be tracked over time to identify new opportunities and optimize marketing budgets. At Alkye, we specialize in offering digital marketing services to help clients make smarter marketing decisions and stay ahead in the game.