Types of Digital Marketing KPIs & Metrics to Track In 2023

How do we know where marketing efforts and resources need to be directed? Marketing campaigns consist of 80% of outcome results from 20% of input.  Marketing KPIs to make informed decisions using data are relied on by digital marketers.

Let’s find out why are tracking metrics are important and how digital marketing agencies benefit the most from this.

What are Digital Marketing KPIs? 

Marketing agencies set KPIs in marketing, and these metrics are used to measure and examine in order to provide insights into pathways to achieving business results or goals. 

Agencies now have insights into how clients’ businesses are doing, and how effective their marketing initiatives benefit the company’s bottom line through Key Performance Indicators.

Are KPIs in Digital Marketing important, and do they matter? 

Marketing agencies can ensure they achieve their goals by setting KPIs. These KPIs provide insights into whether a strategy is effective. KPIs can also help guide businesses with their business proposals and business plans in the direction to enhance effectiveness if something isn’t working well and provide insights on key focus areas.

An approach can be tweaked when marketing agencies set KPIs for each phase of their digital marketing campaigns and measure them regularly- enabling a clear pathway to achieve their goals. 

Marketers are able to hone in to see different things with specific KPIs that are set- providing insights on how new conversations are driven, engagement, audience reach and website traffic.

The Best Ways to Track KPIs in Digital Marketing 

Here are some popular ways to track marketing KPIs effectively: 

Adding and compiling data from different reports manually 

Manual compilation of data has been around for years, however, this takes a long time to not only compile but to analyse the data as well. 

It is also prone to human error. There is a high risk of inaccuracies  

Also, it requires more manpower as creating reports is time-consuming.

Most Important KPIs in Digital Marketing in 2023 

1. Customer Lifetime Value

Whether you are a dentist or an agency that provides website design services,  customer lifetime value is one of the most important KPIs to track.

This is a forecast of net profit generated over the course of a business relationship with a customer. CLV is an indicator of how valuable a customer is to a business for an indefinite period of time. 

2. Customer Acquisition Cost

The money required to acquire a new customer is acquisition costs such as marketing, sales pitches or meetings, and everything else that contributes to a conversion or a lead. 

3. Cost per Lead

How cost-effective your marketing strategies are at creating new leads is determined by the cost per lead metric. A person that shows interest in your product or service by accomplishing an objective is a lead.

4. Return on Investment 

Having an ROI as a KPI is key when driving or working towards the end goal or objective. Every company wants to market a service business and for a return on investment. This is a method of calculating the ROI from a company’s marketing budget. 

5. Conversion Rate

This is indicative of the call to action that a business puts in place. To know if a campaign was successful, the conversion rate is measured in percentages. Examples of conversion are if people buy a product, or they sign up or subscribe to a newsletter, and sign-up for a service.

KPIs for SEO Marketing 

6. Organic Traffic

This is generated when a user finds your website through a web browser that is not a paid ad. These are usually the highest converting traffic so it is very important to capture these. . Generating leads from organic traffic is key, and free!

The goal of all websites should be for Organic traffic to become the number one digital source for leads. In order to track organic traffic accurately and present it in an organized way, you will need dedicated tools, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites. 

7. New and Lost Backlinks

You want to be creating new backlinks from reputable sites on a regular basis. A reputable site is one that gets a lot of good traffic, and that Google also sees as a trusted site. You do not want to be connected with dodgy sites and Google will penalise you for this. Lost backlinks- this implies that the link was removed from the other website.

8. Keyword Rankings 

This refers to the position of the website on the search results page based on a specific keyword search. The reason more people click on a particular website is because of a page’s ranking with a particular keyword. Therefore, adding the right words on the page title can attract more clicks to the page.

9. Domain Rating and Domain Authority 

These metrics were respectively introduced by Ahrefs and Moz- telling you how authoritative and strong your website is, allowing you to track website search performance.

10. Average Position 

Through search engine results, the average position allows you to see the average position of your content. The key indicator is if the number is low, the better you’re doing.

Email Marketing KPIs 

11. Open Rate

This determines the number of email recipients who open an email in percentage. This way you are able to track whether or not emails are working or not working.

12. Deliverability Rate 

The success rate of an email being delivered to a recipient.

13. Bounce Rate

This is to track whether an email bounces back once sent. 

There are two types of bounce rates: soft bounce and hard bounce.

A soft bounce happens when there is a temporary issue such as a recipient’s inbox being full, or when a server is down.

A hard bounce is when there is an invalid email address, a non-existent email address, or a server blocking unverified emails.

14. List Growth Rate 

In which your list expands, that’s the list growth rate- the higher, the better. 

This is one of the key KPIs to track, as this allows marketing agencies to gain more subscribers enabling insights to know if the subscriber base is shrinking or growing. 

Tools that can be used are Mailchimp. A rate of 2.5 per cent on average should be the aim. 

15, Unsubscribe Rate 

Basically, the percentage of recipients who unsubscribes to our emails immediately. And here the lower the number the better of course.

Paid Marketing KPIs 

16. Cost Per Click (CPC)

It represents each ad click’s average cost.

17. Click-through Rate (CTR) 

It shows the number of times an ad was clicked on, and this normally measured in percentage 

Social media Marketing KPIs.

18. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 

This indicates the amount of money that is generated through an advertising campaign.

19. Follower Growth Rate 

Social media profile reflects the branding of a company. Indicating how quickly a client’s social media account is gaining followers. Comparisons can be made throughout a period of time.

20. New Comments, Likes, Shares and Follows 

This includes tracking the engagement of social media accounts.

21. Conversions from Social Media 

Successful call-to-actions made by the target audience on various social media platforms.

Which Metrics should we track, and what type of assessment tools do we use? 

There is no one-size-fits-all, therefore, a combination of various types of metrics and productivity tools should be used, according to the desired objectives or goals.

Always lead with the SMART criteria when selecting your metrics: 

■ Specific 

■ Measurable 

■ Achievable 

■ Relevant 

■ Timeline 

The KPIs that are selected should provide data that can be used for future planning of marketing strategies and the overall business goals. Marketing agencies that specialise in can help you in selecting your metrics, and tools to monitor and track. 

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