Discover what a KPI is and learn how it can help you measure your marketing results

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A KPI — Key Performance Indicator — is a very relevant metric for measuring the performance of a Digital Marketing strategy and management processes. These performance indicators can also be known as Key Success Indicators.

Do you know what successful strategies have in common? They all instagram database constantly monitor the performance of the stocks.

According to Content Trends 2017, 78.1% of companies that document their strategy are considered successful. In companies that do not document their strategy, the percentage drops to 25.2%. You can find more data from the survey in the full report.

This tracking is what allows you to determine what is working and what is not. Basically, it is the best way to analyze the results . But this analysis needs numbers!

These numbers are the best way to know if your results are in line with the objectives of your Digital Marketing strategy and if your company is having the desired ROI .

To help you measure these results, we are going to tell you everything you need to know about the famous performance indicators or KPIs.

In this article you will learn:

What are performance indicators or KPIs?
What is the difference between performance indicators and metrics?
How to choose a good KPI?
Why Facebook Likes Are Not Good Core KPIs
What types of KPIs can you use?
How to put it into practice?
What are performance indicators or KPIs?
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. It is a way of measuring whether an action or set of initiatives is effectively meeting the objectives proposed by the organization.

There are thousands of indicators that can be measured. We are in an age where the flow of information is immense and constant! The key point is to know how to choose which indicators to measure.

A KPI can be a number or a percentage.

If you want to measure how many pages a visitor viewed on the blog you created for your business during a visit, you'll need a number (3 pages per visit, for example). The bounce rate for a page on your blog is a percentage, such as 70%.

What is the difference between performance indicators and metrics?
This is a very common confusion. KPIs are not the same as metrics, but a metric can become one of the key performance indicators when required.

It sounds confusing, but we'll explain it to you!

KPIs are important indicators for your business and your goals, while a metric is just something to measure . If for some reason this metric becomes relevant to your strategy, it becomes a key indicator. Got it?

The important thing is to understand what can help in decision making within your company. This is the basic premise for choosing any KPI and it is how a metric becomes an indicator.

A key performance indicator should be valuable to the business and help you and your managers make smart decisions .

And that brings us to the next topic!

How to choose a good KPI?
A KPI should be relevant to your goal. If you want more visits to your blog, tracking the average price of your customers' purchases within your e-commerce is not interesting (not right now, at least).

KPIs are intrinsically linked to objectives for a very simple reason: they are what measure the performance of each of the objectives .

Always remember that wrong indicators show wrong performance. So it may seem like you are doing great, but in reality you are not, and vice versa!

To make this choice easier, we list 5 characteristics of a good KPI.

Availability to measure
It sounds obvious, but it’s true! To choose a key KPI, it must be available so that it can be measured and analyzed properly. For example, you can only quantify leads after you start generating them .

Importance for the business base
The KPI shows that your strategy is delivering results and that the main objective is being achieved.

If your business is growing and selling more , the KPI should show you that you are actually growing and selling more.

Relevance
One of the biggest mistakes when choosing KPIs is opting for vanity indicators , that is, numbers that do not show any results but make the Marketing team happy.

Primary indicators such as comments, likes and shares on social media do not show concrete results; they simply seem important . Focus on what really matters!

Helping with smart choices
Data and information are the foundation of good choices. Your key performance indicators should help you make smart decisions.

What's the point of having good data if it's not the basis for choosing the best path for your company?

Have periodicity
The KPI needs to be constantly measured, as it is this monitoring that allows you to understand what works, what doesn't work, and whether the ROI is interesting.

Choose KPIs that can be measured periodically and that help make periodic decisions.


Why Facebook Likes Are Not Good Core KPIs
Yes, we know. You may have suggested using the number of Facebook comments or likes as an indicator. Starting today, let's agree on one thing: don't do it! We're going to tell you why.

Good performance indicators are those that show how your goal is to generate more business or business opportunities for your company . A like alone is not an accurate way to analyze this.

The only way to use social interactions as a KPI is to relate them to other factors.

For example, how many customers who came from Facebook commented on your post? How many liked it? These correlations can generate interesting data, but social interaction alone cannot.

Our advice here is to focus on what really matters and what is clearest to measure and monitor.

What types of KPIs can you use?
As you can imagine, there are a multitude of performance indicators that can be important to your strategy (and your managers), but many of them only make sense if they are backed up by data or day-to-day evidence.

Therefore, you can use different types of indicators according to the interests of those who are analyzing the results.

To make it simpler, we'll separate them into three categories: primary, secondary, and practical. Check them out!

Primary KPIs
These are the key performance indicators that your superiors and senior executives want to see. They are key to your goals and indicate that you are helping the company make more money. It's that simple.

Analyzing Inbound Marketing and Digital Marketing strategies , most of them will have one of these options as their primary KPI:

leads;
traffic;
cost per lead acquisition;
conversion rate ;
total income;
purchase income.
When you show your results to your superiors, always remind them of the main objective!

If you want to understand more about online marketing, planning, benefits and goal setting, download a complete material on the topic below:

Digital Marketing: The Complete Guide to Rock Content

Secondary KPIs
If you have managers or supervisors, they keep track of strategy development and results. Therefore, they have the need (and time) to look more closely at other performance indicators.

The KPIs you work on and report to your manager should show that your test management and strategy is on track . These indicators should reinforce the key ones and show the whys.

Some interesting secondary KPIs are:

cost per lead at each stage of the funnel;
newsletter subscribers;
blog subscribers;
recurring visits to the blog;
cost per visitor;
traffic source ( organic , paid, social media, direct, email , and others);
Average price per transaction.
Remember: Secondary KPIs should justify the primary ones ; they show how those results are being achieved.

Practical KPIs
Now, let's talk nerdy content! But don't worry, everything will still be very well explained and easy to understand.

Within a Digital Marketing and Inbound Marketing campaign, those who manage and administer the day-to-day need to constantly perform tests and monitor more detailed data on user behavior, acquisition, and characteristics.

Therefore, you (or your marketing analyst) need to follow a slightly longer list of indicators. Some of them are:

pageviews;
pages/visit;
bounce rate;
best landing pages ;
pagerank;
most searched keywords (according to your business);
most read/visited content;
traffic;
visitors (new vs returning);
social interactions.
This list can go on for a long, long time. The key is to understand what is important to your objective and what will help you achieve better results for your managers.

If you want to learn how to measure and analyze these indicators, check out our Complete Guide to Google Analytics .

It is important to understand that as you move through the KPI categories (primary, secondary, and actionable), you need to keep up with the above!

That is, the marketing analyst needs to monitor all the chosen indicators, but for the director, the most interesting one is the one that will bring the most financial gains to the company; one that will prove the ROI of the investment.