Popular KPI’s For Digital Marketing Channels

Key performance indicators (more commonly referred to as KPI’s) are used by companies of every size within every industry all over the world. They are the metrics used to measure and track the success of campaigns. A good marketing campaign will use a variety of marketing channels and KPI’s are a way to ensure you don’t keep sinking money into marketing efforts that aren’t getting results. Consistently tracking the outcomes of your various marketing activity will help you improve your results exponentially, both short and long-term. To help you with this, we’ve listed some of the most popular KPI’s for the common digital marketing channels below.

Where Can You Use KPI’s for Digital Marketing Channels?

There are a multitude of different online marketing channels you may choose to implement as a part of a marketing campaign. Each will vary in cost and its ability to help your particular business thrive. Seven of the most common types you will see are as follows:

Email

Email marketing is done by sending direct emails to individuals. HubSpot estimates the average return on investment for an email marketing campaign is up to 3800%. That’s $38 back for every dollar you invest! Want to learn more about email marketing? Here are a couple blog posts we recommend reading:

• How to Create an Email Marketing Funnel
• How to Craft an Effective Email Marketing Campaign

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Advertisements you only pay for when an individual clicks on your ad are called PPC ads. The user is then redirected to your site or landing page. These are great for small businesses, as they present very little to no up-front costs.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO boosts your websites visibility by skillful content creation, using keywords and adding backlinks into your content, to name a few. When done correctly, it yields an extremely high return on investment, but may take time to see results.

Video Marketing

Demo videos, testimonials, interviews and educational videos, among others, are an incredibly effective marketing channel. They help expand your bandwidth and reach a broader audience.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

This method uses popular social media platforms to help market your business. The ability to add share buttons on social media helps make it easier for your existing audience to spread the word for you.

Content Marketing

Blogs, e-books, infographics, social media posts and videos that offer valuable content to your audience are all great examples of content marketing.

Affiliate Marketing

Partnering up with another big online retailer is another great way to market your product or service. You pay a small commission each time a website visitor clicks on your link or discount code.

There are certainly other marketing channels where you might find KPIs. For example, you could do webinars, podcasts, lead magnets or something else. Once you create your marketing plan, and you know what all you intend to do, plan out your KPIs at that time. Then, you’ll know how best to measure success.

Popular KPI’s for Digital Marketing Channels

Each different marketing channel will have different metrics that will most effectively allow you to track your campaign’s progress. Here are some of the more popular KPI’s for each individual channel previously mentioned:

Email

1. 

   Tracking the number of emails delivered will help you to get a better gauge of how big your email list actually is. Having an email list 100,000 people long means nothing if 50% of those messages are not getting delivered. On average, you can expect around 80% of your contacts to actually receive your email.

2. It’s also important to track how many of the delivered messages are being opened. This will help you to determine whether or not your content is speaking to your customer list. An average open rate for emails is around 14.3%.
3. Tracking the number of spam complaints and unsubscribes is also super important. It will also give you valuable insights as to whether or not your content is worthwhile to your email list.
4. Watching the click-through rate will show you which links are getting noticed and where those links are located in the body of your email. Most click-through rates tend to be around 2.6%.

PPC

1. Tracking the click-through rate on your PPC ad will enable you to determine whether or not it is getting attention. Carefully monitoring this will help you understand when to pause ads that aren’t effective. You can make changes and to increase bids on those that are. For search ads, an average click-through rate will likely be around 1.91%. For display ads, it’s more likely to be about 0.35%. Read more about these averages here.
2. Just as in email, monitoring the click-through rate will show you what percentage of people who see your ad are actually following through with visiting your site or landing page.
3. Cost-per-click is another important factor to track. It will help you to stay on budget and determine whether or not a campaign is worth the investment. According to an article by WordStream, an average CPC for search ads is around $2.32 and $0.58 for display ads.
4. The conversion rate will show you how many of the people clicking on your PPC campaign are actually becoming customers. Another article by WordStream reports an average conversion rate for search ads to be 4.40%, and .57% for display ads.

 

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SEO

1. Keep an eye on the number of people who are sent to your website through organic search engine results.
2. Monitor keyword rankings on sites like SEMRush to make sure your site is continually ranking better for a variety of high-volume and relevant keywords, to attract attention.
3. Notice how many visitors sent to your site from a search engine immediately leave the site without interacting. This is your bounce rate and be sure to track it closely. Based on a study done by RocketFuel, an average bounce rate will tend to be somewhere around 49%. There can definitely be a significant range though. Also, a high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a problem with your SEO not performing well. A high bounce rate could very likely be a problem with your website not performing well.
4. [Website performance metric] Tracking the pages per session will help you to gauge where your site visitors are going most often. Additionally, you will see how many of your site’s pages they are visiting per session. The more you can learn about your consumer’s behavior, the more you can adapt your site to their wants and needs. It’s normal for most website visitors to look at two pages on a website, before they leave the site. See if you can get an average of more than two pages per session, on average.
5. [Website performance metric] Checking your visitor’s average time spent on your site is another important tool to show you the quality of your content. The longer a visitor stays on your site, the more relevant your content is. Then, you will also see why they are visiting in the first place. Most website visitors tend to spend 2-3 minutes on a website.

Video

1. Track the number of clicks on any videos you post, to determine how intriguing your content is to your audience.
2. Next, track the amount of time your audience watches the video, and your bounce rate, to understand whether it’s keeping your audience engaged or not.
3. Monitoring the view-through rate will give you a percentage of how many of your video viewers stayed until the very end. The higher that this percentage is, the more accurately you’ve spoken to your target market.
4. Also, watch for recurring users to further clarify the value of your content to its intended audience.

Social Media Marketing

1. Track your social media posts impressions to measure the bandwidth of the campaign you have launched.
2. Determine its value by noticing how engaged your audience becomes with it. Engagement refers to likes, shares, retweets, replies, comments, reblogs, repins, etc.
3. Monitor the number of leads your campaign is generating, as well. How many of those who interacted with your post have taken it a step further and visit your website? What about reaching out via direct message to inquire about your product or service or by calling your business?
4. Lastly, track your conversion rate.

Content Marketing

1. Check on a regular basis to determine how many unique page visits your content is eliciting, and even more importantly, which content is driving the greatest attention.
2. Tracking inbound links will help you to see who and how many people are sending traffic back to your site. Quality content will help establish you as an expert in your field, resulting in backlinks from other quality sites.
3. Measure how many people are downloading any free content you offer, to determine its value.
4. Also, monitor your growth. You can create content on many different platforms. Quality social media content should attract new followers, readers, etc.

KPI’s are a way to ensure you don’t keep sinking money into marketing efforts that aren’t getting results. ~ Jillian A. #KPIs #DigitalMarketing Click To Tweet

Affiliate Marketing

1. Notice the click traffic your affiliate campaigns are directing to your site, to identify where your most significant growth is coming from.
2. Track your top affiliates regularly so you can continue to nurture and grow those relationships.
3. Tracking your conversions, much like in any other marketing channel, is extremely important for affiliate marketing.
4. Your average order value will show you the amount of money customers are spending through individual affiliate marketing programs. This is another way to show you which affiliate relationships to nurture.

Incorporating KPI’s into Your Marketing Campaign

Regardless of which marketing channel(s) you choose to use, tracking the performance of each avenue(s) will help you ensure your marketing budget is working for you. When you know the best KPI’s for digital marketing channels, you have a higher chance of success. Additionally, consistently tracking the success rates of each will help you constantly evolve your marketing campaign. This way, your business continues to see great success year after year.

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