If your company has hired a digital marketing agency this year, or you are thinking of doing so, it is essential that you measure the effectiveness of the work they are doing. To do this, as with any other investment made by the company, there are management indicators that you should evaluate periodically. What are they? Here are the 20 best KPIs in digital marketing that will help you measure whether your strategy is successful.
A key performance indicator (KPI) allows you to closely monitor the progress of a process and know whether the goals you have set are being achieved. If not, they help you make early decisions to redirect your strategy and avoid wasting money on efforts that are ineffective or have little impact.
There is no rule of thumb for identifying the best indicators for your strategy. Every business has its own needs and, therefore, its own objectives. The important thing is that KPIs help you measure whether or not that objective is being achieved within a certain period of time.
For example, if your digital marketing strategy includes developing a landing page to sell a product, SEO positioning of the site, and SEM campaigns on Google Ads, in addition to measuring conversions and increased sales, you will probably also analyze the site’s organic (SEO) and paid (SEM) clicks and impressions, search result rankings, registrations and calls from the landing page, cost per click, and cost per lead, among other things.
If it is a social media branding campaign, not including paid campaigns, you will measure the organic increase in followers, likes, comments, impressions, and overall interaction with posts.
To establish the KPIs for your strategy, every digital marketing agency should follow some general recommendations, such as not setting too many indicators, as this can distract the team from their work. It is better to define a few KPIs that are aligned with the strategy’s objective.
From there, the level of detail of the indicators will also depend on the number of specific objectives that are established.
It is also recommended that KPIs follow the SMART philosophy:
● Specific: don’t fall into generalities; the more specific the data, the better. For example, segment between organic and paid interaction.
● Measurable: they must be easy to measure and quantify.
● Achievable: don’t set measurable goals that are unlikely to be achieved. It’s okay to dream, but the idea is to make dreams come true.
● Relevant: indicators must be relevant to the business and the objective of the strategy. If the goal is to increase sales, 100,000 followers who do not interact with your content and are not interested in your product are useless.
● Time-bound: set short time periods to track KPIs and compare their evolution. For example, instead of just measuring leads, it is better to identify month by month how many leads arrive and at what rate they grow or decline.
Find out here what the basic elements of a digital marketing strategy should be.
To analyze the indicators, we will use an example, such as (first) the development of a website (not a landing page) with a form for capturing leads. In this case, we will also run (second) a Google Ads campaign for SEM positioning.
We will complement this with (third) 15 posts per month on Facebook and Instagram. And to give the brand and product greater reach and visibility, these posts will be (fourth) promoted to redirect your audience to the website mentioned above.
In this case, we could measure more than 30 indicators, but remember, it’s not the quantity that matters, but the quality of the information you can obtain to verify whether the objective is being achieved.
Here is a summary of 20 KPIs that you can use as a reference:
For your website with a lead capture form:
1. Number of visits to your website.
2. Average time on site.
3. Bounce rate.
4. Registrations (leads).
5. Conversions.
For your Google Ads campaign:
6. Keyword positioning in search engines.
7. Reach.
8. Impressions.
9. CTR-CPC-CPM.
10. Conversions.
For social media (organic):
11. Number of followers.
12. Likes.
13. Comments.
14. Shares.
15. Page recommendations (Facebook).
For social media (promoted content):
16. Frequency
17. Reach
18. CTR-CPC-CPM
19. Relevance score
20. Interactions Discover 5 tips for successful digital marketing on Facebook. Some of these indicators are easy to track, and platforms such as Facebook provide tools that allow you to view them periodically. However, other KPIs require greater judgment using Google Analytics and the Facebook Business platform, so it is not advisable to experiment if you do not have the necessary knowledge.
It is also important to note that indicators alone are not enough if there is no team specializing in digital marketing strategy behind them. In your case, if you already have an agency, it will be able to interpret the KPIs and help you determine what actions to correct or strengthen in the process.
If you don’t yet have the necessary support, don’t keep experimenting and put the future of your business in specialized hands. At The Orange Lab, we have the experience to design and measure a successful digital marketing strategy. Tell us your idea and we will execute it!
