Does your company know how to use digital marketing KPIs to achieve your goals and the expected results? Do you monitor and measure performance indicators closely?
These two questions are fundamental because KPIs in your company is only helpful if you know how to use them to meet goals and if you monitor them to analyze the strategies adopted.
Thus, this content will discuss the importance of tracking KPIs and how to define them.
The first point is to understand the meaning of KPIs. It is an acronym for key performance indicators (Key Performance Indicator). In other words, as the name implies, they are indicators to help businesses achieve results.
Thus, from the digital marketing KPIs, it is possible to analyze these indicators and generate insights for managers to identify improvements in processes, review strategies and better direct specific actions.
Then, after these changes in positions, plans and strategies, the KPIs are used again to evaluate performance and results. In other words, it becomes a continuous improvement process.
It is also essential to clarify a common question: are indicators and metrics the same thing? The answer is no! A metric needs to be linked to a goal to become a KPI. Since metrics are mere data collected by tools and analytics.
To visualize it better, let’s look at a practical example. A standard metric in the field is the number of website visitors. So, for this metric to become one of the digital marketing KPIs, the company needs to aim to increase brand visibility or improve organic traffic.
From there, it is essential to monitor and analyze the evolution of the number of visitors to see if there have been improvements in traffic and visibility.
However, more than just representing the objective is needed to have a KPI. There are also other aspects that we will see below.
First, it is essential to understand that there is no KPI rule or standard to adopt in your company’s digital marketing sector. Each business will have indicators that make sense according to its strategy and objective, and the definition of these KPIs will depend on the chosen methodology.
One of the best-known methodologies is SMART, which indicates criteria for setting objectives and, thus, defining the KPIs linked to them. See how it works:
Specific: point out the main objectives of your company at that moment.
Measurable: see which metrics will help you reach that goal.
Attachable: Determine the necessary steps and processes for achieving these goals.
Relevant: select the objectives and, consequently, the indicators related to your business purposes.
Time: establish the time needed to achieve these objectives, that is, the interval in which the indicators will be monitored.
Tracking the KPIs is essential to see if the results and objectives are achieved. Thus, it is possible to evaluate the success of the implemented digital marketing strategies.
After all, it is not because a strategy was well planned and targeted to the right persona with the right keywords; it has valuable content and good SEO practices that will achieve the idealized objectives at the right time.
Therefore, monitoring KPIs is essential to measure the efficiency of strategies and actions, optimize marketing efforts, check costs for acquiring leads and customers, keeping the budget under control.
Other benefits of looking at digital marketing KPIs are:
A significant theme linked to digital marketing KPIs is the use of the data provided by these indicators to guide the decisions and management of the company’s marketing sector.
Nowadays, this trend has taken shape and has become known as data-driven management. Through it, it is possible to deal with behavioral information from visitor profiles, strategy results, and operational data and, thus, make decisions.
Data-driven is very important because, based on valuable insights, it allows management to have a more complete and broader knowledge of digital marketing actions. This can influence the achievement of objectives and the company’s success.
After much talking about the importance of tracking and monitoring KPIs, you may wonder how to watch them. So I’ve separated a list of some tools to help you:
Also Read: Digital Marketing Trends For 2023