Are you carrying out an online marketing strategy for your website? If the answer is yes, this article will surely be very useful for you to know what a KPI is, its importance and what it is used for.
If you already know this term and its usefulness, you may be interested in the end of this post, where we talk about how to choose the most convenient KPIs to measure those factors and variables that you think are most important for your site, and the use that should be given to these in order to obtain maximum effectiveness and success with your page.
What is KPI, what does it mean and what is its translation?
The term KPI, which stands for Key Performance Indicator, refers to a series of metrics that are used to synthesize information about the effectiveness and productivity of the actions carried out in a business in order to make decisions and determine those that have been most effective in meeting the objectives set in a particular process or project.
KPIs are also known as quality indicators or key business indicators that can be used and applicable in any business area and productive sector, although they are very commonly used in online marketing.
“The ultimate goal of a KPI is to help make better decisions regarding the current state of a process, project, strategy or campaign and thus be able to define a future course of action.”
Why are KPIs used and what advantages do they offer?
KPIs are used for several reasons:
1. They allow valuable and useful information to be obtained.
2. Measure certain variables and results based on this information.
3. To analyze the information and effects of certain strategies (as well as the tasks that were used to carry them out).
4. Compare the information and determine the effective strategies and tasks.
5. Make appropriate decisions.
But what are the practical advantages of using KPIs?
Some of the main advantages are the following:
- KPIs, largely thanks to the improvement of new information technologies (Big Data: databases, automation systems and data computerization, etc.), offer a much simpler, objective and reliable measurement compared to traditional channels in which the quantification of certain issues is tedious and complicated.
- There are currently a multitude of specialized analytical tools that make it possible to measure all types of KPIs in any sector or activity and to obtain a greater amount of objective data on what is to be quantified. Normally these types of tools are very focused for use in a specific field of action, so they will always use the most appropriate and suitable KPI’s in each case, which greatly facilitates the work:
Choice of KPI’s- Locating objective, measurable and relevant data for what you want to measure.
- Obtaining synthetic reports on what you want to determine.
- The KPI’s not only allow you to determine the results for a specific action or strategy, but also offer a global vision of the situation, since they facilitate the determination of strong and weak points (aspects of improvement) for your projects.
How to choose the right KPIs for your marketing strategies?
From this point we will focus on the KPIs for Marketing that are the most used and known today and we will give some guidelines on how to choose and use the most relevant KPIs for Online Marketing in each case to obtain useful information in this type of strategies.
As we have previously mentioned, KPIs are used to measure all kinds of variables applicable to an activity, sector, etc.
Marketing strategies base their objectives and results on the achievement or improvement of the data obtained in these KPIs and the optimum level set for them. The KPIs allow us to obtain high quality information.
But first of all, it is imperative to talk about the characteristics that a KPI in Marketing must meet to be really relevant to what you want to measure as well as the different types of KPI that can be used in each case.
What characteristics should a Marketing KPI have?
We could define a series of standard parameters that any Key Performance Indicator should meet to be really relevant and adequate, and thus obtain the best possible results in your marketing strategies. They must be:
- Specific
- Continuous and periodic
- Objectives
- Quantifiable
- Measurable
- Realistic
- Concise
- Consistent
- Relevant
What types of KPIs can be used in online marketing strategies?
Depending on the type of strategy and the means used to carry it out, some KPIs should be used or others.
The main types of KPIs in online marketing strategies are the following:
Online marketing KPI’s for Social Networks:
When social media marketing strategies are carried out, the objectives are usually aimed at measuring the impact of the actions carried out in the different social networks for the brand.
In this way it is possible to determine which is the most appropriate in each case, which actions have had a greater impact, points of improvement of the strategy, etc.
They are mainly used to measure the number of interactions with publications:
- Number of mentions.
- Number of followers.
- Number of comments.
- Number of shares.
- Number of subscribers.
The main KPIs for measuring visibility, social interaction and engagement in networks are those provided by each social network in each case (Linkedin: number of recommendations, Twitter: number of Retweets, Google Plus: number of +1, etc.).
In the case of the main KPIs for measuring the growth of the community in networks, they are more closely linked to the number of followers, although those that indicate the level of interaction can also be useful for this purpose.
Online marketing KPI’s for Web Analytics:
When you want to analyze and measure the level of organic positioning of a website and other analytics options, the use of specific KPI’s is necessary to evaluate the progress of your website.
Generally, they are used to measure and determine:
- The reputation of the domain in the eyes of search engines (DA, PA and Spam Score).
- The type (follow and nofollow or inbound and outbound), quality (from which media we are linked) and number of links to the website.
- Traffic origin and type and duration of visits.
- The keywords and the number of them by which users find the web.
- The positions occupied by the keywords for which we want or have managed to position the website in the search engine results.
The main KPIs for web analytics are the number of new users, the percentage of new users, the number of pages per session and the number of sessions.
General online marketing KPI’s:
For the overall analysis and measurement of the results as a whole of the online marketing strategies carried out in a brand, there are different types of performance metrics, as could be according to the scope the following options:
- KPI for sales and customers: number of conversions, the click-through rate on your ads,
- KPI for content: to know where blog content is read, bounce rate, number of unique visitors, visits via mobile devices, number of page views, content engagement (bounce rate, click-through pattern…), level of interaction (number of comments, mentions and shares), etc.
KPI for email marketing: to measure for example the number of email openings, the number of clicks on the email or the number of unsubscribes in your mailing campaigns.
How to use and choose the most appropriate marketing KPIs to measure your online strategies?
- Before starting to measure, analyze and compare data and strategy results, it is necessary to consider very well what issues you want to study and what data you need to obtain to get the information you need. This is essential if you want to obtain useful, current and real data.
For example, it makes no sense to use a KPI such as the bounce rate or percentage of bounces on the web to measure the volume of interactions achieved on social networks, as is logical. - It is also necessary to define the objectives very well in order to determine the most important KPIs in each case and discard those metrics that, although they may offer some additional information, do not serve directly to evaluate whether or not the proposed objectives are being achieved.
- A fairly common mistake in a web analytics study when determining the results is to use all those metrics that may be related, thus causing a large accumulation of information which can generate problems of organization, structuring and understanding of the same for effective decision making.
- Another aspect to take into account when choosing KPIs in online marketing strategies is that the objectives set must be achievable and realistic for the period of time set for achieving them. Otherwise, they will not be met or achieved.
- Once the KPIs have been chosen, they should be analyzed periodically (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) according to the need and the type of data obtained.
- Finally, you should also consider the relevance of the information extracted from the KPIs, since there may be irrelevant data that can generate wasted time in their analysis and divert attention from those KPIs and data that may be of real interest to you.
As you can see, when creating a professional web page and later publishing it, a series of objectives must be contemplated in order to be successful with it and to be able to obtain the expected ROI.
The Internet is an increasingly competitive environment, so it is becoming more and more important to analyze the performance of the website and carry out the appropriate actions and decisions based on the data obtained if you want to get results.
Therefore, KPIs for online marketing will be especially useful to exploit this environment and achieve the goals you set.
And you, have you ever used KPI’s, what types of KPI’s have you used, do you use any online marketing KPI to analyze and measure your strategies?
