The KPI’s That All Brands Should Monitor

The first step to any successful marketing campaign is…defining what success looks like! Identifying key performance indicators, or KPIs, is essential to building an effective marketing strategy framework.

With all the tracking tools, advanced metrics, and analytics capabilities marketers have at their disposal, it’s easy to get lost in the data and lose track of the bigger picture. Selecting a few quantifiable data points to measure is immensely valuable for tracking progress, guiding decision-making, allocating budget, and finding opportunities for improvement.

This article focuses on KPIs every brand should monitor and optimize for sustained success.

Brand Awareness

How well do consumers know your brand? It's an abstract question, and it's uniquely challenging to quantify. But, because brand awareness is a predictor of sustainable sales and growth, it's worth trying to answer.

Branded search volume is an excellent place to start. This number represents traffic from users who use specific keywords that mention your company by name. Another valuable tool for measuring brand affinity is Google Trends. Trend insights reveal if more users are searching for your brand (by name) compared to six months ago.

By examining several different branding metrics, you can put together a "brand perception score" index that gives you a big-picture look at how you're performing compared to competitors. In addition, it helps you know whether or not you're likely to be in consumers' minds when a trigger moment occurs.

Email Open Rate and Click-through Rate (CTR)

Believe it or not, good ol’ fashioned email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to engage your target audience and generate conversions. Because it offers so much potential, it’s vital to monitor and optimize for two KPIs: open rate and click-through rate.

To improve open rates, consider your subject lines. They’re the perfect place to indulge in shamelessly clickbait-y copy. Once the recipient opens the email, use compelling design and convincing selling points to move the reader to your website.

Keyword Ranking

Keyword ranking refers to how often your website appears in search results for a given word or term. For example, if you're a roofing contractor, are you showing up when people search "roofing repair companies near me?"

Marketing strategies should focus on positioning your brand to stand out at each stage of the customer’s journey and every micro-experience leading up to the trigger moment. Regardless of what life event or change in circumstance causes them to act, the next step in their journey (the researching phase) typically involves a Google search. If your brand has a high-ranking position for several relevant keywords, you have a significantly better chance of driving traffic to your site and eventually turning those searchers into conversions.

You can implement several strategies to improve your ranking, but the fundamental principle is creating high-quality, relevant content that aligns with user intent and incorporates keywords naturally. Optimize on-page SEO elements, such as meta titles, headers, and image alt tags, to ensure search engines can easily understand your content. Additionally, focus on building high-authority backlinks and regularly updating content to maintain relevance and competitiveness.

MQL to SQL Ratio

Aligning your sales and marketing team is essential to moving consumers through their journey. The MQL to SQL ratio refers to the conversion rate between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). MQLs are leads deemed likely to become customers based on marketing efforts, while SQLs are leads vetted by sales teams as ready for direct sales engagement. This ratio helps assess the effectiveness of marketing efforts in generating leads that are not just interested, but ready to become a customer.  

Measuring the MQL to SQL ratio provides insights into the continuity between marketing and sales teams. A high conversion rate indicates that marketing is successfully reaching the right audience, while a low conversion rate might suggest a need to refine lead qualification criteria or messaging. This metric ultimately helps optimize lead generation strategies, ensuring an allocation of resources toward leads that are most likely to convert.

Conversion Rate

After investing in the initial phases of the customer journey, you want to capitalize on the equity you've built amongst your audience. Every customer journey ends somewhere. For many brands, a website conversion represents the finish line.

Traffic campaigns play a role in any digital marketing strategy, but website visits may be more of a vanity metric unless users are taking action on the landing page. By focusing on conversion rate instead, brands can determine whether or not their landing page's UX/UI and graphic design elements effectively guide website visitors to take the preferred action.

Determining which factors contribute to your conversion rate is an art and a science. By experimenting with, or A/B testing, different landing page components (button placement, color schemes, etc.), you can begin optimizing elements to increase this KPI.

Cost Per Lead

Attribution is one of the preeminent advantages digital marketing offers. When a user contacts a business through its website or via phone call from an online listing, advertisers can readily identify where that lead originated (display ad, social media ad, paid search, etc.).

For service-based businesses, most marketing strategies revolve around generating qualified leads. If you're running a multi-channel campaign with the same objective, determining which platform performs best can help you direct your ad spend more efficiently.

Although it’s tempting to focus all your attention on the final touchpoints, zoom out when evaluating ways to optimize your lead generation campaign strategy. Consider the entire customer journey and determine where prospective customers are initially engaging with your brand. Giving credit to the beginning of the purchase process can help guide future marketing investments and provide a more accurate picture of the entire customer journey.

Let’s Talk Data-Driven Decision Making

This list only scratches the surface of all the KPIs brands should consider when optimizing marketing performance. Analyzing the numbers can be tedious, but the payoff is worth it. That's why 2060 Digital’s operations and data analytics teams collaborate to make data-based decisions that position our clients for the highest return on their investment.

If your brand is ready to grow, get in touch with one of our experts today to schedule a consultation.