7 essential KPIs for analyzing your marketing strategy

Being a digital marketer means making quick decisions. With online platforms and channels constantly evolving, you need to make sure you're on top of market trends and consumer behaviors.

To analyze your efforts and prioritize your data, you'll need to focus on key performance indicators (KPIs). These are quantifiable measures of whether you're achieving your marketing objectives.

Why are KPIs important to your marketing plan?

A true reflection ofyour strategy's effectiveness, KPIs are crucial to your digital marketing plan. By defining clear, quantifiable KPIs, you can assess progress towards specific marketing objectives. Despite their importance, only 23% of marketers are convinced they are tracking the right KPIs. "It's not enough to measure the end result," says Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta. "You also need to track intermediate metrics to understand where consumers might get stuck: essentially bottlenecks in the marketing funnel.".

What is the marketing funnel?

The marketing funnel (also known as the sales funnel) refers to the three stages of the customer journey. It describes the simplest purchase path customers can take.

• Awareness-raising : introducing potential customers to your brand or product to solve a problem they may have.
• Consideration : introduce your brand or product to customers while they evaluate it against alternatives.
• Decision : influence consumers' purchasing decisions using the information you've gathered in the previous steps.

KPIs are essential for measuring your success at every stage. During the awareness phase, marketing KPIs such as website traffic and impressions help you understand how to attract potential customers. At the consideration stage, metrics such as time spent on your website, page views per visit and social network interactions become more relevant and reflect how you're connecting with your target audience. Finally, at the decision stage, your main focus should be on KPIs such as conversion rate and sales. These reveal the extent to which your marketing strategy is generating tangible results, such as sales or leads. By constantly monitoring and analyzing KPIs, you can make data-driven decisions, optimize your strategy and achieve better results.

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7 essential KPIs to measure the quality of your marketing strategy

1. Impressions

Impressions correspond to the number of times your ad or organic content is displayed or viewed, whether or not it generates clicks. While this KPI doesn't reflect the number of customers who interact with your content, it does help build brand awareness. It's often used interchangeably with "reach", but it's crucial to understand the difference between the two. Impressions track the number of times users see your content (and include multiple views by the same people), while reach only takes into account the number of users who see your content.

To measure impressions of your brand, you can use Google Ads or social media platform analytics tools to track and report how often your content appears to users. By analyzing impressions data, you can assess the effectiveness of your targeting strategy at the awareness stage and adjust it accordingly to maximize exposure.

2. Search engine rankings

There are over 2.6 billion online shoppers in the world, representing over 33% of the total global population. To ensure you reach a large online audience, your website needs to appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Your ranking on search pages directly influences the visibility and accessibility of your brand to potential customers.

Tools such as Google Analytics and specialized search engine optimization (SEO) tools provide valuable data for measuring search engine rankings, including :

• Number of keywords targeted by ranking
• Organic traffic volume
• Number of backlinks

Monitoring these metrics can help you understand how your SEO strategy is performing, and what adjustments need to be made, such as improving website loading speed or creating more relevant content for your target audience.

3. Click-through rate (CTR)

The click-through rate is an essential KPI for evaluating online advertising campaigns and search engine results. You calculate it by dividing the number of clicks received by your ad or link by its impressions, then multiplying this number by 100 to obtain a percentage. To measure and analyze CTR, you can use digital marketing tools such as Google Analytics to obtain detailed information on ad, keyword and content performance. Whatever the marketing asset, each CTR can indicate the quality of your communication with customers. A high CTR means your content is relevant and appeals to your target audience. The best way to determine your CTR target is to analyze industry benchmarks, historical data, campaign objectives, as well as your target audience's specific patterns and preferred advertising platforms.

4. Cost per click (CPC)

Marketing KPIs don't just measure engagement with potential customers; they can also indicate changes you should make to your digital marketing budget. For example, cost-per-click is a KPI that takes into account the amount you pay each time a user clicks on your paid ad. You calculate CPC by dividing the total cost of your ad by the number of clicks made. For example, if you spend 100 euros on your ad and it receives 50 clicks, the CPC would be 2 euros. This KPI helps you assess the financial efficiency of online advertising efforts when reviewing them. A lower CPC indicates a more profitable campaign, allowing more clicks within your budget. You can track and measure CPC using tools such as Google Ads, which provide real-time advertising performance data.

5. Conversion rates

One of the most important marketing KPIs at the consideration stage is the conversion rate. It corresponds to the percentage of visitors to your website or digital platform who carry out the desired action (make a purchase, subscribe to your newsletter or fill in a contact form...). You calculate it by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors, then multiplying this result by 100. For example, if your website receives 1,000 visitors and 50 of them make a purchase, the conversion rate is five percent. You can measure the conversion rate using digital tools such as Google Analytics, which track user interactions and behavior, including how and what they convert on. Understanding the conversion rate is essential for evaluating your marketing campaigns, as it focuses on customer actions. A higher conversion rate indicates more successful engagement with your target audience. If your website has a low conversion rate, you may need to find new ways to encourage customers to take action.

6. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

You've probably heard the phrase: "It costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one". If Newbiz is the primary objective of marketing, it comes at a cost that you need to measure and monitor. Customer acquisition cost is a marketing KPI that calculates the total expenditure incurred to acquire a new customer. You calculate it by dividing the sum of all marketing and sales expenditure over a given period by the number of new customers acquired during that period. CAC monitoring helps you make data-driven decisions to optimize marketing efforts and allocate a budget to ensure you're spending money on the right customers. For example, if your company aims to attract a new target audience focused on sustainability, this may prove too costly if the company's sustainability advertising content has a low conversion rate.

7. Return on investment (ROI)

Return on investment is a KPI that can provide crucial information on the expected and actual results of marketing initiatives. ROI specifically analyzes the decision stage of the customer journey. Whereas other cost-based measures focus on earlier stages, ROI compiles profit-related information into a single metric that communicates overall performance. You calculate ROI by subtracting the cost of your marketing efforts from the revenue generated. You then divide this number by the cost of your marketing efforts. For example, if your digital marketing campaign costs 1,000 euros and generates 3,000 euros in revenue, the return on investment would be 200%. Google Analytics and marketing automation software are common tools for tracking campaign revenues and costs. It's vital to note that if you don't monitor KPIs early on in the marketing funnel, it can be difficult to determine whether your efforts have contributed to the success or failure of your campaign. By analyzing the ROI of marketing initiatives, you can identify your most profitable strategies, allocate resources more efficiently and make decisions that maximize your budget.

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