Though each business will prioritise specific KPIs based on the particular activities or performance they want to track, these are some of the most commonly-monitored metrics. 

Reach or impressions

A metric most commonly used across social media, this relates to the amount of individuals who have viewed your marketing activity. Whether it’s an Instagram post, a Google Ad or a YouTube video, it’s important to keep in mind that this figure is related to the number of users or accounts that have seen your content. 

Platforms are updating their algorithms constantly to get as accurate a figure as possible. Yet the prevalence of bots and fake users means this metric is more of an indication of the volume of interest in your content than a highly accurate data point. However, it can be useful if you’re researching a potential new business landscape or working on an attraction campaign. 

Engagement

This measures the number of users or accounts that have directly interacted with your activity. Again, this can be disrupted by the presence of unhuman users. Though as it usually relates directly to real actions, such as likes, comments or opens, it is generally a more accurate data point than reach. 

A helpful indication of what content is and isn’t chiming with your audience, monitoring engagement rates across different platforms also indicates where they’re interacting with your business. If you’re starting out in tracking your customer conversion journeys, comparing the engagement rates of different channels can be valuable. 

Conversions

A key metric for any business, linking all of your datasets into one platform will help you track all your conversions and the touchpoints that lead to them. If you run your marketing activity through a CRM system, this makes customer journey analysis even easier as any actions your leads take will automatically be tracked. 

Then, by analysing groups of new customers or clicking into individual profiles you’ll be able to see which activities were most effective at driving conversion. This insight can feed into any future campaign plans or activity investments. 

Qualified leads

Also called marketing or sales-qualified leads, tracking and assessing this metric is essential for an effective handoff between both teams. By qualifying leads based on the actions they take, the content they’ve engaged with or the interactions they’ve had with you, you can be sure they’re ‘hot’ enough to pass on to salespeople for closing conversations. 

Again, in CRM systems, it’s possible to set up automatic lead-scoring models. Here you can assign certain numbers of points to particular actions. For example, making an enquiry would be worth +50 points while unsubscribing to emails would be worth -20. Once leads reach a certain score, they’ll be automatically passed onto the sales team, meaning no opportunities are lost. 

Return on investment

One of the most challenging metrics for marketing teams to track and analyse, data dashboards make it possible for marketers to see exactly what return they got on their investment. Whether it’s in Google, social media ads or retargeting activities, marketing KPI tools can give users direct insights into how many pounds were gained for every one invested. 

As well as doing this for individual activities, linking datasets together in one platform enables marketers to compare the ROI of different tactics. This can then inform future strategies and investments. 

Customer value and cost

Comparing a customer’s lifetime value vs. cost and tracking this over the long term can help businesses optimise their activities to be as profitable as possible. It’s also a great benchmark metric to use for wider business objectives around customer service, engagement and delivery. 

To measure this accurately, businesses need to ensure all their datasets are linked to one platform. Plus, they’ll need to wait a few months for enough data insights to be collected to work out an average for both value and cost.