When it comes to
measuring our marketing impact we already know we need to start with goals.
Creating SMART goals – ones that are Specific Measurable Actionable Realistic
are even better. But once those goals are established marketers need to make
sure we are able to accurately measure these goals to indicate results and
performance. Defining the correct Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, and metrics will
ensure you and your team have a streamlined process.
KPIs vs Metrics
Remember the saying “all
squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares”? This applies to
KPIs and metrics. All KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs. Examples
of metrics include visits to your website, adds to shopping cart, purchases,
bounce rate, new vs returning visitors. Metrics are valuable when assessing the
performance of your marketing, but they do not necessarily provide in-depth
insights into the performance of your brand. KPIs provide more insights into
high-level brand goals. For example, purchases on a website would be considered
a metric. It is important to know how many products consumers are buying, but
that doesn’t really tell you very much about your brand. A key performance
indicator would be something like purchases per hundred visits to your website
– that gives you more insight into your brand goals and performance.
Identifying KPIs and
Metrics
When your team decides
what indicators to measure, keep in mind the high-level marketing goals for
your brand. An example of a high-level marketing goal can be increased brand
engagement on social media. Some metrics that could be used to measure that
would be post clicks, likes, comments, shares, and page follows. Social media
KPIs could also include factors like relevancy score. Because Facebook uses a
variety of factors like who is clicking off the posts, how long users interact
with the post, and if users are responding positively or negatively to the
posts to measure relevancy, it would be considered a KPI.
Measuring Marketing
Once your team has identified the metrics and KPIs that they will track to gauge performance, it is time to gather the analytics. Tools like Google Analytics, Facebook for Business, and Twitter analytics can provide metrics for your campaigns. Generally the analytics tools provided by the native platforms themselves are a great option, they are designed to measure the best data that relates to their products. There are also benefits to using third party platforms as well. Third party platforms may allow you to see metrics from different platforms at the same time, or allow you to see comparisons beyond with the native platforms allow. Using services like DashThis or SocialBakers to gather data on social media interactions can provide new insight into your data. DashThis is a useful tool that allows marketers to plug data from your tracking platforms directly into your account to create dashboard of your analytics that automatically updates.
Once your team has identified the metrics and KPIs that they will track to gauge performance, it is time to gather the analytics. Tools like Google Analytics, Facebook for Business, and Twitter analytics can provide metrics for your campaigns. Generally the analytics tools provided by the native platforms themselves are a great option, they are designed to measure the best data that relates to their products. There are also benefits to using third party platforms as well. Third party platforms may allow you to see metrics from different platforms at the same time, or allow you to see comparisons beyond with the native platforms allow. Using services like DashThis or SocialBakers to gather data on social media interactions can provide new insight into your data. DashThis is a useful tool that allows marketers to plug data from your tracking platforms directly into your account to create dashboard of your analytics that automatically updates.
