How to Set Digital Marketing KPIs and Goals
Many digital marketers and marketers generally struggle to set the right Key Performance Indicators(KPIs) — especially at the beginning of a new marketing campaign. KPIs are typically matched with numbers to help organizations hone their efforts on what is important. They’re also great for measuring progress and results of the organization’s activities.
Goals
The overall goals of the company should determine your digital marketing KPIs. Are you trying to create awareness about your product by appearing in the press? Is brand visibility more important to you than paying customers? Are you trying to raise funding for your company?
Answering these questions will help you plan a marketing strategy as well as decide what goals to chase. A company trying to raise awareness about its products can track the number of mentions in the press as a KPI.
Channels
What channels and platforms do you use for marketing? Each marketing channel requires its own set of performance indicators. Social marketing platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube tend to measure metrics differently — a Facebook video view is different from a YouTube view and a Facebook impression is calculated differently from a Twitter impression. It’s important to understand each channel’s metrics and how they affect your bottom line.
Performance of a blog can be measured by page views but also by time spent on the blog. It can also be measured by how many customers acquired. Each marketing channel is unique and must be measured separately.
Your Budget
How much do you intend to spend on marketing? Your budget informs what numbers you can achieve as well as where to spend marketing numbers. If it costs $5 to acquire a new user but you have a $300 budget, this means you can only acquire 60 users. Your budget is a huge determinant of what numbers to set as your goal.
Company Stage
Is your product in the ideation phase, beta testing or a demo? Are you trying to convert trial customers to paid customers? Have you added more features or are you trying to acquire enterprise customers? The stage of your company informs your marketing KPIs and goals. A company testing an idea might focus on increasing emails in its waiting list while a company with an already launched product might focus on acquiring paid users via SEO. Both campaigns have different goals attached to them and will result in tracking different metrics.
Customer Stage
Is your customer target in the awareness stage, consideration stage or decision stage? It’s important to note what type of customer your digital marketing efforts are trying to attract. A customer in the awareness stage typically takes longer to convert to a paid customer when compared to a customer in the decision stage.
Set KPI Boundaries
Understanding each marketing platform and the channel will help you set KPI boundaries. These boundaries are typically set based on experience interacting with your audience. Enterprise products for example set engagement KPIs(retweets, likes, comments) for social media platforms over acquisition KPIs(site traffic, new users). This is because they use social media to remain top-of-mind to already existing customers as opposed to creating awareness of the product to new customers.
Make your KPIs SMART
In summary, your KPIs should be Smart.
Specific — State exactly what you want to measure.
Measurable — Ensure the KPI is something you can accurately measure.
Attainable — Ensure it’s a number you can reach or achieve.
Relevant — At the end of the day, ensure the number improves the company’s bottom-line.
Time-bound — Decide within what time range you want to achieve each number.
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