A KPI stands for “key performance indicator.” They exist in all forms of marketing, and they can literally be whatever you want them to be. But, the point behind bench marketing and tracking a KPI is to measure the critical variables and data to show how successful you are in achieving your monthly website goals.
In the world of digital marketing, for example, top KPIs for social media success can be tracking follower growth or the number of times your active social posts are liked and shared.
Which KPIs Best Measure Website Internet Marketing Success?
Because there are literally 1000’s of KPIs to track and measure the success of your digital marketing efforts, we have decided to narrow the list to our personal top 3 suggestions.
1. Website Marketing ROI
A lot of SEO’s talk about organic search engine rankings and traffic. Of course rankings are important because rankings lead to traffic and traffic leads to conversions. But ultimately, most businesses don’t care about their rankings as long as they are getting conversions. So, your true measurement should be tracking ROI (return on investment).
For example, if you are spending X amount of dollars on organic marketing, you need to track the amount of leads and conversions that came from the organic traffic. *Note: If you are doing more than one kind of marketing at a time (PPC, Social, Organic, Newsletter, etc) you should be tracking each one separately and tying a budget to each.
The ROI Breakdown:
Your Marketing Budget, per type: _________________ (for a month)
Your Total Sales (from that specific marketing type): _________________ (for a month)
Sales Total: $_________ – Marketing Budget: $_________ = $_________ Your ROI
So, if you are spending $1,000.00 on organic marketing and you sold $10,000.00 worth of product that came from organic traffic, your ROI is $9,000.00 (minus your overhead).
On the other hand, if you spent $1,000.00 on PPC marketing and the numbers show you only sold $100 in product from your PPC traffic, you may want to reconsider PPC as a sold marketing technique for your site and put that money into organics instead.
See why this is so important?
2. Website Bounce Rate
Google Analytics tracks your website traffic and the user behaviors. It’s important to know how much traffic is coming in and where it’s coming from, but it’s even more important to know what they do when they get there. I mean, who cares how much traffic you get if all of it results in a high bounce rate?
When you look at the “Acquisition” tab in Google Analytics, you will be able to view your traffic and see the number of visits, per keyword and what the bounce rate, page visits and visit duration is.
Bounce rate numbers show the visitor rate of time on site. So, 100% bounce rate means people are leaving almost immediately! A good number falls somewhere between 40-60%. If that’s not happening, it’s time to think more in-depth about your target audience and redevelop the copy, images, videos, etc. on those pages/articles.
3. Website Social Shares
We’ve talked about this before, but SEO without social is dead. The way people use the internet has been heavily influenced by popular social sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn – so it’s no wonder Google has integrated social sharing into their ranking algorithms.
If you are writing a lot of content it’s super important to get people to buzz about it on their social platforms. Google +1s are a reasonably weighty factor in your SEO, but Facebook shares and Tweets carry some weight also.
When you track the social shares you can get a good idea of what type of content you gets the best shares so you can focus on more of that! If a particular post gets a lot of likes and shares, write a follow up post and integrate more of that topic into your other marketing efforts as well!
On the other hand, if you post blogs, articles and socially share certain topics that get no love, then your audience is clearly not interested and therefore you know what NOT to write about as well.
Succeeding on the Web is All about Measurement
If you get these 3 KPI’s in place then you will have the basics covered for organic and paid marketing ROI – from social to blogging. From there you can add to your KPIs and continue to develop out a strategy for better benchmarking, tracking and marketing in the future.
Best of luck! If you need help, give us a call: 1.800.871.4130.
I like how you got it down to just 3 basics, and included a ROI breakdown. Good job!
Thanks Renee! There are so many KPI’s it is tricky for people to know what is most important. We chose these 3 because they track and report on some of the most current organic marketing techniques.
Very concise. Thanks Jenny
Pretty basic, but sometimes we all need a reminder to get back to the basics!