7 Essential Marketing KPIs Every Marketer Should Be Tracking Right Now But They Are Not

If you have ever been a part of the marketing team, you might be familiar with the budget constraints. You wished you had more money to run paid campaigns, but you don’t have that liberty. Did you know why? The main reason is that you failed to justify your argument of increasing the marketing budget in front of top-level executives.

This happens because you did not track the performance of your marketing campaigns. Yes, your marketing campaigns might be underperforming and are not delivering the results you want them to but that does not mean that you should stop tracking your key performance indicators.

You might be thinking which marketing KPIs should I track? If you are looking for an answer to this question, then you are in the right place. In this article, you will learn about seven marketing KPIs examples every marketer should be following but they are not.

1. Website Traffic

If you want more people to know about your brand and products then, it is important to generate more website traffic. The more people visit your website, the more they know about your brand. The more they know about your brand, the better chance you must convince them to buy your products. It’s all about building brand awareness. Would you ever buy a product from a brand you have never heard of? No, right. That is why website traffic matters. 

Closely analyze the location and sources of traffic and identify which source makes the biggest contribution to your website traffic. Search engine optimization specialists and inbound marketers would want most of your website traffic comes from search engines. Even if most of your traffic is not coming from search engines, it is important to know where it is coming from so you can target your prospects in a better way.

2. Traffic to Lead Ratio

Congratulations! You have succeeded in increasing your website traffic but is it enough? Unfortunately, it is not. If your website is attracting hundreds and thousands of visitors per month but none of them is showing any interest in buying your products, then it will make your website traffic worthless. 

As a business, you want to convert those website visitors into leads. That is where this marketing KPI comes into play. It tells you how many people has shown any kind of interest in your offerings by drawing a comparison between your website traffic and leads generated. The higher your traffic to lead ratio, the better.

3. Cost Per Lead

How much money do you spend to generate a single lead? How much money does it cost you to acquire a new customer? These are two of the most important question for businesses and it can easily be answered by two important KPIs for marketing.

• Cost Per Lead (CPL)
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

In order to measure your cost per lead, you will have to collect data from different systems such as CRM and ERP systems in your organization. To calculate cost per lead, you will have to consider the following costs:

• Human resources
• Technological resources
• Advertising
• Marketing distribution

4. Conversion Rate

By far the most important key performance indicator, conversion rate tells you the percentage of your website visitors which are taking the action you want them to take. The action can be as simple as subscribing to newsletter to as complex as purchasing a product. The higher the conversion rate the better it is for your business. Digital marketers create landing pages and link those landing pages to relevant offerings to capture leads. 

5. Social Media Reach and Engagement

Social media is an integral part of your digital marketing strategy. Just sharing content on social media without tracking how it is performing in terms of reach and engagement kills the purpose. Measure the impact of your social posts by looking at the number of shares it gets. Another important social metric you should keep an eye on is engagement. How many people are commenting on your social posts? How many likes does your social media posts get? Social media reach and engagement KPI answer all these questions. Also track users visiting your website through social media to give you a better idea about the effectiveness of social media marketing efforts.

6. Customer Lifetime Value

According to statistics, acquiring a new customer costs businesses five times more than retaining an existing customer. Despite this, a small percentage of businesses focus on customer retention while a large percentage always look to acquire new customers.

Business should be aware of the lifetime value of each customer. Here is how they can calculate it:

Average sale per customer X Average purchase frequency X Customer retention time

The best way to increase your customer lifetime value is to launch lead nurturing campaigns that targets your existing customer base.  

7. Sales Revenue

Last but certainly not least is the sales revenue. When tracking this marketing KPI, make sure you identify how much sales are generated through digital marketing efforts and how much of your sale comes from other channels. Once you are clear about the sales generated from digital marketing efforts, you can calculate the sales revenue of your digital marketing.

Here is a general formula for calculating sales revenue:

Sales Revenue = Units sold X Sales Price

Which marketing key performance indicators do your track for your marketing campaigns? Let us know in the comments section below.