Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a method of measuring how effectively a company is achieving its business objectives. They should serve to make life easier for Marketing Directors, yet sometimes deciding which ones you should actually care about is a challenge in itself. After all, whether you want to increase your active followers on Twitter or decrease your website’s average page load time, there are hundreds of digital marketing KPIs out there.
Luckily, Relevance has you covered with all the top digital KPIs you need to be following for social media, content, SEO and digital PR, as well as the best internet marketing tools to help you do it more efficiently. Digital guru, here you come!
The digital KPIs you NEED to know
Social Media KPIs
1. Engagement – this is by far the most important social media KPI you can measure. Engagement encompasses likes, reactions, shares and comments, and it’s generally accepted that it is better to have a small audience of active followers than a large reach with low engagement. High engagement positively affects social media algorithms, showing your posts to a larger audience and helping your network grow.
How to track it? Sprout Social is an effective SM management tool that tracks engagement so you don’t have to. It also offers a range of publishing, analytics and team collaboration solutions.
2. Share of Voice – how many mentions do you get on social media? If you care what people think about your brand – and you should – it’s time to find out!
How to track it? We recommend tools like BrandMentions and Hootsuite Insights, which track what people are saying about your brand and your competitors. Awario is another favourite tool for tracking social mentions since it crawls 13 billion web pages per day – if they can’t find your mention, no one can. It also has a nifty ‘Reach’ metric that assesses the commenter’s level of influence to prioritise your responses.
3. Conversions – social media usually drives non-revenue conversions such as downloads or email sign-ups.
How to track them? It’s still possible to measure the social conversion rate for these goals by integrating a free tool like Google Analytics. The amount of referral traffic can be calculated to determine the number of successful conversions.
4. ROI – the monetary proof that your online marketing efforts are working can be a difficult digital KPI to track, especially for social media.
How to track it? Try Bitly – it helps track the success of the links you place on Twitter and also tracks demographics across channels, showing that you’re reaching the right people.
Content KPIs
1. Engagement – content comes in many different styles and formats, from blog posts to white papers. Engagement KPIs can include time on your site, page views, bounce rates and social engagement.
How to track it? Dwell time (time spent looking at content) is a good indicator of engagement and it’s easily measured with Google Analytics. The average person reads at a rate of about 200-250 words per minute, so if they spend less than 20 seconds on a 600-word blog post, you can assume they weren’t very interested in the content. KPI dashboards like Klipfolio and Geckoboard allow you to compare data from month to month or year on year.
2. Brand awareness – increase your brand’s visibility by creating highly creative and shareable content in a variety of formats and collaborate with influencers in your niche. The more backlinks and brand mentions you get, the better you’ll hit those digital marketing KPIs.
How to track it? YouTube Analytics, Google Analytics and AdWords can help you, but paying for Qualtrics gives you a little extra in terms of surveys, reports and competitor analysis.
3. Lead generation – is your content capturing data and generating business leads?
How to track it? You can track your lead generation progress with a plugin like MonsterInsights, which can also display metrics such as total revenue, conversion rate and top referral sources.
4. Click through rate (CTR) – CTR is the point at which engagement and conversion meet. If the number of people who click on any call to action is high, people are interested enough in your content to want more, but lower click-through rates might indicate that either the target audience or the content topic should be reviewed.
How to track it? CTRs can be monitored on Google Analytics.
SEO KPIs
1. Organic sessions – an increase in organic traffic is the single most important digital marketing KPI because it means you can be found more easily on the SERPs.
How to track them? Once again Google Analytics is an ideal online marketing tool, but you can go further with cross-referencing data points with a reporting tool like Agency Analytics.
2. Keyword ranking – try to aim for high volume keywords and targeted long-tail keywords, while planning a longer-term strategy for more competitive keywords.
How to track it? Useful keyword tracking tools include SEMRush and Ahrefs.
3. Page and session data – the number of pages per session, duration, bounce rate, top exit pages and load times are all extremely important factors in SEO. These insights can help you optimise content, metadata and keywords.
How to track it? GTMetrix is the best tool for insights into your website’s load time, while Google Analytics can help with the rest.
4. Crawl errors – Googlebot accesses your site to determine page ranking, but any crawl errors obstruct this process, so they need urgent attention.
How to track them? Google Search Console tests and detects crawl errors.
Digital PR KPIs
1. Backlinks – links to your website boost your organic search position, so they should be a top priority for digital PR professionals. Factors that contribute to link quality include domain authority (DA), anchor text, relevance, usefulness and placement.
How to track them? Moz is good for checking domain authority KPIs. Aim for a DA score above 40 to really improve your search ranking.
2. Referral traffic – web traffic can come from links or content promotion. Contributing guest posts can drive traffic to your own site, so it’s good to assess the publication’s audience to tailor everything from the post’s title to the destination URL.
How to track it? This can be monitored by Google Analytics
3. Brand awareness – We saw this earlier in content, but it is just as important in digital PR!
How to track it? Again, YouTube Analytics and Google Analytics can help you measure how much impact your PR is actually having on your audience.
Relevance has plenty of experience measuring KPIs in all the above categories, so don’t hesitate to contact our team if you think you could benefit from our knowledge.
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