Marketing is a science and an art at the same time. It takes a team of creative minds to create a powerful marketing strategy that will reach the right audience, resonate with their hearts and minds, and build a trustworthy image of your brand in the competitive market.
On the other hand, these creatives also need to possess a set of analytical skills in order to measure the performance of every marketing tactic, make accurate marketing forecasts, and utilize relevant insights to improve marketing performance in the long run.
Needless to say, marketing is a cumbersome process that
requires you to keep a close eye on the most relevant KPIs in order to bear the
right fruit. After all, every goal in your company should be measureable first
and foremost. With that in mind, let’s break down the most essential KPIs you
need to track in order to boost the performance of your marketing strategy.
1- No. of unique website visitors
Your website is the foundation of your entire existence.
Before anyone decides to message you or engage with your company in any way,
you can bet that they will check out your website first in order to verify that
you’re the real deal. A well-optimized website can build trust and spark an
emotional connection with the customer, but only if your marketers and
developers stick to the latest trends in the industry.
But most importantly, you need to track the performance of your website by monitoring the number of unique visitors. This is also a good way to gauge the performance of your online and offline marketing efforts, as an influx of new website visitors usually means that your ads and marketing efforts are making an impact.
2- Click-through rate
If there is anything your ads should achieve to justify your
investment, it’s to improve your CTR across the board. You want people to be
clicking on the link that leads to your website on search engine results pages,
social media, and of course, other authority websites that offer ad space. To
achieve this, though, your marketing experts will need to craft compelling and
well-optimized ad copy that will launch the ad to the top of every relevant
search, and inspire potential customers to click on the link.
However, it’s not just about crafting a compelling ad, it’s
also about calculating its performance. To calculate your CTR, simply divide
the total number of clicks for an ad with the total number of impressions and
then multiplying that by 100. The value you get is your percentage of total
clicks vs the number of times people saw the ad. With this information, you can
decide whether to run the ad again, or refine your approach to make it more
profitable.
3- Customer retention rate
If you’ve been in the business game for any amount of time,
you know that the costs of landing a new customer vs the costs of retaining an
existing one are much higher. This means that your customer retention rate is
one of your most important KPIs, if not the most important one. It tells you
just how satisfied your customers are with your products and service, and gives
you an actionable insight into how you can improve over time to keep them from
leaving you.
To be able to measure your retention rate, you will first
have to gather feedback. This is the easy part, as launching a
customer satisfaction survey is a quick process that will allow you
to collect the reviews you need in a matter of days. Once you have the feedback
in your hands, you can compare your current retention rate with last month’s
reports, allowing you to gauge your standing in the market and adapt your
approach accordingly.
4- Conversion rate
Your conversion rate is another fundamental KPI you always need to keep a close eye on, and constantly compare to your past performance as well as projections. You need to know exactly how you’re doing in terms of conversions in order to stay competitive and relevant in the market, as well as to find out how successful your marketing and advertising tactics really are.
Again, it’s a straightforward equation: Divide the number of
conversions in a specified period by the total number of website visitors and
multiply it by 100. This percentage tells you how good your marketing efforts
are at converting leads and first-time visitors into paying
customers. And remember, it’s essential that these customers become
loyal brand followers in order to feed your customer retention rate.
5- Marketing return on investment
Marketing return on investment, or MROI for short, is a
tricky metric to obtain. Nevertheless, it’s essential that you calculate it in
order to assess the financial viability of your entire marketing strategy.
What’s important to keep in mind, though, is that MROI is not a single
comprehensive metric, but rather a collection of all independent metrics that
feeds into your overarching marketing strategy.
In other words, you will need to measure and track different
KPIs at different timescales, as not all marketing efforts produce results at
the same time. Some marketing tactics such as SEO or content creation deliver
results over months and years, while others such as PPC advertising and email
marketing will show their effectiveness almost immediately. Be sure to collate
all of these findings after a quarter or even a year in order to gauge your
MROI.
In conclusion
Marketing is the fuel that drives
businesses forward. Without it, there is nothing to set companies apart from
one another, nor is there anything to entice the customers to choose a
particular brand. Be sure to monitor these essential KPIs in order to gather
actionable data that will allow you to craft amazing marketing campaigns for
years to come.
