How To Choose KPIs For Your Digital Marketing Strategies?
In a world where data is everything, digital marketing has proven to be a great way to produce great campaigns for future use. More traffic means your digital marketing tactics have proven to be effective. So, if you are ranking #1 in a keyword, it means you are doing something right.
While it feels good to be ranked #1, the ultimate goal is to make a profit. If you aren’t using your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) the right way, it will only lead to inaccurate marketing analysis and strategies that lead to zero conversion.
Behind every company with a successful marketing campaign, is a company that did its due diligence and rightly applied the KPIs to make these strategies work.
Many people are confused when it comes to applying the KPIs the right way. The key is to contextualize them to suit your business. These KPIs must not only suit your goals, but they must also put factors such as the business’ strengths and weaknesses into consideration with regards to the stage of the business at the time.
We have outlined some tips that will effectively help you craft effective and robust KPIs that can be applied to your business strategies with the view of achieving business success.
Let’s begin, shall we?
1. Definition of Business Goals
It’s important to define your business goal before going further. This allows you to truly keep in touch with your business. For instance, if the current business goal is to bring in more customers and turn over, then your KPI must keep track of the customer count and total sales per time.
Another example could be, if the current goal is to raise the brand’s awareness, then keep track of the engagement metrics. For instance, you can monitor how many likes and comments you receive on a particular social media post and compare it with the last one to know if there is significant progress.
2. Examine the “Why” Behind Success and Failure
It’s not enough to focus your KPIs on digital campaigns alone, it’s also important to ensure you are making significant progress in dealing with the weak sides of the business. If you are succeeding in your social media marketing, your KPIs will determine the reasons why such success is being recorded. On the other hand, if you aren’t optimizing your social media marketing strategy, your KPI points it out, hence enabling you to make defining decisions.
3. The Size of Your Company Should Determine the Type of KPIs to Select
Different companies and organizations have their life stages and every stage comes with its requirement that must be met to move on to the next stage. Many startups are often more focused on expanding their business and customer base while bigger companies are more focused on outshining their competitors to maintain their market reach. Hence, it’s important to find the KPI that suits the stage of your business.
For instance, if you have a small business, you may want to expand your customer base, hence your ideal KPIs will be:
- Unique site visits
- Rate of conversion
While for a large company looking to have a steady hold on the market, your KPIs will include:
- Engagement and retention of customers
- Result ranking from search engines
4. Synchronize KPIs With the Relevant Industry
Industries have their unique requirements, therefore there is a need to study your KPIs and the industry you are in to create an alignment between both. This enables you to stay relevant, do the right thing, and achieve the right result.
For instance, online stores should pay more attention to online sales given that their business depends heavily on digital media. It’s also important to pay attention to customer satisfaction. As a digital-based company, your KPIs should include how long visitors spend going through your website.
5. Choose SMART KPIs
Your goals must be clear and concise and easily understood by all and sundry. A goal can be interpreted in a million ways by people; therefore your KPIs must be SMART:
Specific: How can I align my KPIs with defined goals?
Measurable: Can this be achieved?
Attainable: Are my goals realistic and attainable?
Result-oriented: Are the outcomes being measured (not merely the inputs)?
Time-Bound: Is a deadline attached?
It’s important not to assume the other party sees the KPI the same way you do. For instance, a statement such as ‘I need double conversions’ could mean different things to different people, besides which, the statement seems incomplete. However, a statement such as ‘I need you to achieve a 100% increase in conversion before the end of the year’ is less likely to be misinterpreted.
How KPIs Enable You to Achieve Concise Digital Marketing?
To effectively use KPIs and achieve the needed result, it’s important to think beyond the present and see the bigger picture. While Pinterest may help you generate lots of traffic, if it doesn’t generate a physical measurable result that can help expand your business then it hasn’t done a good job. This is the reason it’s important to pay attention to the KPI and how it’s applied. KPIs help you to look beyond the surface to understand the impact of your business decisions on the growth of the business.
For instance, KPI indicates whether or not your organically grown traffic has multiple on-site conversions and interactions.
Other important data collated using KPIs include:
- It shows how your business is being grown using data analysis
- It shows you that prospects aren’t merely coming into your site to give impressions
- And it visualizes how each of the sources and mediums is being used to generate visits. It then indicates where these visits go, and also show what they did on the site
KPIs can be used to mold digital marketing strategies to give a more effective and efficient result and the more your business expands, the more these KPIs can be used to answer arising questions.
Wrap Up
KPIs have proven to be the tool needed by all companies to create their digital marketing campaigns. They help people make informed marketing decisions that can have a valuable impact on their business’s growth.
It’s not enough to be aware of how to choose effective KPIs. You must also be willing to go a step further to choose KPIs that are suitable for improving your business performance.
To stay ahead of the game, you must select the best KPIs and marketing strategies. That way, your business profit on all sides.
Lyuthar Jacob is working as an assistant editor at a digital marketing agency – Clickmatix Australia. He is the type of geek who loves to write about Marketing, Money Saving, Lifestyle, and Finance. You can follow/tweet him @lyutharjacob
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