Digital Marketing KPIs and Metrics

What are digital marketing KPIs?

KPI stands for key performance indicators, also known as performance metrics. Digital marketers use digital marketing KPIs to measure the success of a particular strategy, campaign, or marketing channel. 

The digital marketing performance metrics you choose should depend on your business and marketing goals. You may choose one or two primary KPIs to support your main goal and a handful of relevant secondary KPIs to support additional objectives.

Types of KPI in digital marketing

Digital marketing KPIs help you understand your marketing performance better. They provide information about how your campaigns are performing. If a campaign is not generating the results you expected, you can monitor and tweak the campaign as needed. Three types of KPI in digital marketing are:

1. Awareness: Awareness means getting your brand in front of as many people as possible. Awareness marketing tactics include cold emailing and calling.
2. Conversion: Conversion focuses on converting leads to customers, i.e., making sales. Content like blog posts and podcasts with advice for your market works well for this stage.
3. Analysis: Analysis KPIs review and determine how much you spent to acquire each new customer. The data gathered helps improve future marketing campaigns.

Why set digital marketing metrics?

KPIs in digital marketing guide marketers to produce specific results, proving return on marketing investment. Without KPIs, digital marketers run the risk of executing marketing activities with no goal or direction. Using KPIs in digital marketing helps measure progress and quantify what would otherwise be intangible marketing benefits.

Digital marketing KPI examples

Digital marketing KPIs differ from project to project. While many digital marketing metrics are case-specific, there are certain KPIs that can be used as a generic metric for performance evaluation. We have listed a few digital marketing KPI examples below:

Email marketing KPIs 

Essential email marketing KPIs include:

1. Number of emails successfully delivered, opened, or replied to: This helps measure whether your messages are getting into recipients' inboxes.
2. Embedded link and CTA button click-through rates: This shows how effective your offers or calls to action are.
3. Social shares and forwards: This helps to measure social engagement with your audience. 

Social media KPIs

Essential social media KPIs include:

1. Number of followers versus number of unfollowers: This helps assess if your content resonates with your audience.
2. Likes, comments, and shares: This signals connection with your audience, leading to higher conversion rates, audience growth, and stronger relationships over time.
3. New impressions: This KPI demonstrates organic reach and growth. 

Content marketing KPIs

Essential content marketing KPIs include:

1. Unique visits: This metric records traffic volume, helping to measure the performance of your sales pages, call-to-action copy, and other inbound marketing and lead generation tactics.
2. Average time on page: Average time on page shows visitors' average time on your website and landing pages. A high average shows that your content is relevant to your audience.
3. Link and CTA button click-through rates: This shows alignment between your offering and target market. 

SEO KPIs

Essential SEO KPIs include:

1. Keyword search engine ranking: Aiming to rank high for your industry-relevant keywords is a good strategy to attract consistent, organic traffic.
2. Organic traffic: Increasing traffic to your websites and products means more people are finding your products and services organically, which indicates your SEO strategy is working.
3. Link click-through rates: Link click-through rate shows how effective your paid ad copy is.

PPC KPIs

Essential PPC KPIs include:

1. Click rate: This helps to assess how persuasive your copy is and how your audience responds.
2. Sales conversion rate: This shows whether the offer promised in your ad is relevant for the audience to which it's being shown.
3. Cost per acquisition: This shows exactly where your budget is going and whether or not your campaign is worth reinvesting in.

What digital marketing KPIs should you not track?

Due to the ease of tracking many digital marketing metrics, it may be tempting for marketers to collect more information than they need. However, this may lead to a waste of time and resources. 

Tracking irrelevant digital marketing metrics can distract a company from what is actually necessary for its goals. Metrics that do not change that brand's impact on the market are vanity metrics and not worth tracking.

What to do when your digital marketing KPIs are not met

If you fail to meet your digital marketing KPIs, review various elements of the marketing campaign like subject lines in email marketing, call-to-action buttons on landing pages, or messaging copy in ad campaigns. 

Involve your team in the review process to form a more rounded view. The best way to get back on track is to adopt an iterative marketing mindset and use good marketing project management tools. 

Wrike's marketing management software provides a collaborative environment for teams to monitor and optimize digital marketing ROI with real-time performance data and insights from previous marketing campaigns.