Key Performance Indicator, also known as a KPI, is simply a measurable value demonstrating how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. In marketing, a KPI could be the number of orders you collecedt or the number of new customers you have gained through your website. In this post, we give a brief explanation of what makes a good and bad KPI and showcase some examples you may want to use yourself.
What is a good KPI?
A good KPI should be quantifiable and actionable. There is no point in using a loose metric as a KPI because you won’t fully understand its impact on your business. Your KPI should align with the core strategic goals of your company and help quantify the targets for your companies’ mission. Yes, it’s that simple.
What is a bad KPI?
Bad KPIs are common but don’t always apply to everyone. These can range from website traffic or simply the number of calls a salesman has made to a potential customer. If your tracking indicators don’t connect to your business’s core goals, they are assuringly to be ineffective.
To solve having bad KPIs, you can use multiple indicators, known as performance and quality indicators. For example, let’s say Steve, a marketing manager, is looking to generate accounts for your company via a newsletter. To track Steve’s success, you would want to track a performance indicator such as the accounts he has created through the newsletter. To make this KPI valuable and understandable, you’d also need to track the quality of the accounts. Thus track the revenue each account has been generating weekly, monthly, and even quarterly. Without possessing the quality indicator, you won’t know if Steve is bringing anything of value to your business through the newsletter and if it’s worth running it in the future.
KPI Examples for Marketing
- Accounts created + £ generated from each account
- Ecommerce orders generated + average order value
- Quotes generated + £ generated from each quote
- Customer loyalty measurement
- Website/page visits + £ generated through ad revenue / sales
- Followers gained + increase of sales
Why You Should Include Two Indicators (Performance and Quality)
As mentioned above, with the Steve example, we see that performance (accounts signed up) is not a good enough indicator on its own. We brought in the quality indicator to track it better, which is the amount each account is spending per month/quarter. From this implementation, we now know how much the newsletter account signups contribute to the company’s overall revenue throughout the business year.
As for another example, let’s say you hire Sally, a social media manager. Sally’s primary job is to bring followers and brand awareness to your company. Now, it’s easy to track follower growth online and thus makes Sally’s progress easier to understand. But let’s be honest, your companies’ primary goals won’t be to reach x amount of followers. They will likely be sales. Thus, Sally’s job will be to implement various image, text and video campaigns throughout social media platforms that incentivise buying from your company. To help track, Sally would use incentive coupon codes, unique phone numbers, single emails, and one-off signup pages to narrow down the sale source. By tracking two indicators, you’ll be able to quantify how much value in terms of sales Sally is bringing to your company and how effective the reach is through social media.
Conclusion
For every marketeer or business out there, marketing is not the easiest to grasp when you include all the layers of digital and traditional. KPIs are essential for every marketing person to know, no matter how junior or senior their role. From organic search KPIs to customer retention KPIs, we always recommend tracking as many areas as possible to know how to proceed with future campaigns.
If you need more help or advice on marketing, feel free to contact us at Talks; we’ll always be here to help you out.
