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Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs) are extremely important to measure the success of your inbound digital marketing campaign. While they’re completely necessary, coming up with solid KPIs can be difficult. The difficulty lies in the fact that an organization’s KPIs may look different to each key decision-maker. While some board members may believe that leads are a valuable metric, others may not get excited about lead generation if it isn’t moving the revenue needle. Here are our tips on setting effective KPIs that your boss will appreciate.
Setting More Effective Marketing KPIs
1. Get a baseline
First, you need to review what has worked for your organization in the past and what has been achieved through KPIs. To ensure that your KPIs are effective benchmarks and help you complete your goals, it is important to get rid of or adapt to any failed KPI in the past.
2. Identify priority goals
Now we’ll take a look at some of your company’s larger goals and find out if you are using the right metrics for those goals.
We can explain this by way of example: Let’s pretend that your goal was to significantly increase your website’s traffic.
Some questions you can ask are:
- How will I know that our site traffic has increased?
- Will increased traffic get me information that will allow our organization to make changes as needed?
- What do I need to gain an in-depth understanding of the website’s traffic?
Asking questions like these can lead to your KPIs, measures like overall site traffic, click-through rates, social shares, etc.
By examining your priority goals initially, you can create your KPIs to be relevant and applicable.
3. Don’t forget leading indicators
Lagging indicators are super common amongst marketers because they measure how you performed in the past. Leading indicators (conversion rates, opportunity age, etc.) can reveal what might happen in the future.
While measuring the metrics of the past is a lot simpler, it is always worth trying to include both leading and lagging indicators in your organization’s KPIs. Leading indicators will help you look down the road and see if you are on track to reaching your goals.
4. Industry-relevant KPIs
Make sure that your KPIs make sense for your industry. Your industry and business model must be taken into account before you chase the wrong goals. If you’re a B2B insurance company, you might choose different KPIs than a business that is in retail.
5. Accessible Dashboards
Having easy access to dashboards you created to view your KPIs is a must. That’s where our personal favorite, HubSpot, comes in.
While HubSpot won’t necessarily help you plan your KPIs at first, the measurements that it takes will give you important insight the next time you need to reassess and build out new or updated KPIs
Using these tools, plus the steps and tips we’ve outlined, you’ll be well on your way to overcoming the challenge of establishing much better KPIs for your inbound marketing efforts.
Interested in a custom digital marketing plan for your company? Contact us at HONE Digital Marketing in Lubbock, Texas for more information and a free assessment.
Our team provides 30 years of combined experience specializing in custom SEO services, PPC ad campaigns, and digital marketing consult.