Breaking Down KPI Myths in 2021

Goals that can be measured are goals that can be improved upon. Successful marketing campaigns within your company may vary in purpose and complexity, but key performance indicators (KPIs) are the driving force behind them all. KPIs are the measurement system in place for determining the success of your marketing efforts, which means it’s critical to understand how they work — and which KPIs tell the most complete story.

Why Clicks Aren’t Everything

Not all clicks are created equal. In the never-ending balancing act between quality and quantity, engagement metrics too often focus on volume without reading into more detailed metrics. Considering all the effort that goes into refining your campaign’s marketing keywords, audiences, retargeting efforts, special offers, imagery, messaging and beyond, it would be a shame if the one snag in your digital ads was as simple as a poor landing page or convoluted checkout process.

Going beyond cheap clicks and analyzing bounce rate, time on site, and other meaningful engagement metrics gives a much more valuable perspective into customer activity than merely driving down CPCs. Cheap clicks can be the sign of an efficient campaign or an audience that’s too broad and largely uninterested in your product — going deeper than surface-level CPC numbers will better expose the truth.

Going Beyond Your Campaign Dashboard

While the major marketing channels are getting smarter all the time, there are still some important metrics that won’t show up on your dashboard. Things like customer satisfaction, increased customer loyalty and your company’s ability to properly reflect customer values must be gleaned from a collection of insights and metrics across the board.

Standard Google Analytics and Facebook campaign KPIs are great at highlighting specific areas of your online strategy’s success, but being in touch with customers takes focused effort from both paid and organic media. Gathering a qualified audience for a targeted ad campaign versus an engaged online community of happy customers are similar-sounding goals, but these goals are achieved through very different means.

The data on your dashboard should be utilized to inform your ad optimizations and other key decisions, but the data you can receive directly through customers via surveys, reviews, polls, and other community interactions can prove equally valuable.

Leading KPIs Differ Across Channels

At the start of every campaign’s creation, the goal in mind must be clear. What are you trying to accomplish, specifically? Your main KPIs will often differ from campaign to campaign, just as your campaigns differ in their respective places amid the digital marketing funnel. Awareness campaigns might judge success off of shares and clicks, while retargeting efforts establish their impact based on site views and items added to carts.

Beyond the simple sales-funnel differences, also keep in mind the strengths of individual social channels. YouTube campaigns might care more about time spent viewing a given video than about shares, and shoppable ads on Instagram might prove easier to attribute conversions to than your brand’s promoted Pinterest images. Recognizing the social channels for their respective strengths and blind spots will reveal meaningful KPIs for each of your campaigns that aren’t always uniform.

Marketing campaigns can be complex, as can the customer journey as they discover and pursue your products and services. Understanding KPIs and applying proper measurement to your campaigns will show you where the journey can be improved, and what works well enough to be duplicated and expanded upon in the future.