To identify and track the right KPIs for your marketing agency you need to clearly define your business goals, identify the key metrics that indicate progress towards those goals for each marketing channel, set specific and measurable targets, and track performance over time to optimize campaigns.
Key Takeaways:
- Define your overall business goals to determine which KPIs to track
- Identify the most important KPIs for each marketing channel you use
- Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound targets
- Regularly track performance against targets to identify improvements
Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are metrics that help marketing agencies measure progress towards their strategic goals. Tracking the right KPIs is essential for understanding what’s working, identifying issues, and improving campaigns. But with so many potential metrics to choose from, how do you determine the right KPIs to track for your agency?
What are KPIs and Why are They Important?
KPIs are quantifiable measures used to gauge performance against key business objectives. For marketing agencies, KPIs evaluate the success of marketing campaigns and initiatives.
Tracking KPIs is crucial because what gets measured gets managed. KPIs enable agencies to:
- Monitor campaign and channel performance: KPIs show how campaigns and channels stack up against goals. This allows for optimization.
- Spot issues: KPIs can flag problems like declining conversion rates so improvements can be made.
- Indicate ROI: KPIs help determine return on investment of campaigns by linking spending to revenue.
- Benchmark success: Comparing KPIs over time or against competitors benchmarks success.
- Inform future strategy: Historical KPIs guide future marketing plans and budget allocation.
How to Choose the Right KPIs
Choosing the right KPIs involves:
- Defining your goals: What do you want to achieve? Goals determine which KPIs are most relevant.
- Identifying metrics for each channel: Key metrics differ across channels from SEO to PPC.
- Choosing leading and lagging KPIs: Leading KPIs monitor ongoing work while lagging KPIs evaluate past performance.
- Avoiding vanity metrics: Focus on KPIs linked to goals rather than big, impressive vanity metrics.
Types of KPIs: Leading vs. Lagging Indicators
KPIs can be categorized as lagging or leading indicators:
Lagging KPIs look backwards to evaluate past performance. For example:
- Revenue
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- Conversion rate
Leading KPIs look forward to monitor ongoing work. For example:
- Keyword ranking
- Social media reach
- Website traffic
Effective KPI tracking uses both lagging and leading indicators. Lagging KPIs identify success while leading KPIs highlight areas to improve.
The Benefits of Tracking KPIs
Here are some of the key benefits agencies get from tracking the right KPIs:
- Increased transparency into marketing performance
- Ability to identify high and low performing campaigns
- Optimization of marketing investments and spend
- Insights to improve campaigns and channels
- Prioritization of resources towards what delivers results
- Proof of marketing’s impact on business goals
- Benchmarking for goal setting
In summary, properly tracking and analyzing KPIs is vital for any agency’s success. The next sections detail how to choose and track the right KPIs tailored to your business objectives.
Step 1: Define Your Business Goals
The first step is to clearly define your agency’s core business goals. Without goals, you can’t identify relevant KPIs.
What Are You Trying to Achieve?
Assess your agency’s strategic objectives. Common agency goals include:
- Increase revenue/profitability
- Acquire more clients
- Expand share of clients’ marketing budget
- Grow brand awareness
- Generate more qualified leads
- Increase customer retention/loyalty
Align KPIs With Goals
Once you’ve outlined your goals, determine which KPIs will best indicate progress towards them.
For example:
Goal = Increase Brand Awareness
Relevant KPIs:
- Website traffic
- Social media reach/engagement
- Brand search volume
- Brand mentions
Goal = Acquire More Clients
Relevant KPIs:
- Leads generated
- Sales pipeline revenue
- Sales team capacity
Be as specific as possible when choosing goal-aligned KPIs. Avoid vague objectives like “grow revenue” – define a targeted increase e.g. 10% revenue growth in 12 months.
Set Both Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Have a strategic long-term vision for the agency as well as shorter-term quarterly or annual goals. Track KPIs that align to goals in both timeframes.
Long-term brand awareness goals affect different KPIs than a short-term lead generation campaign for a new service, for example. Define metrics for both to get a complete performance picture.
Step 2: Identify the Right KPIs for Your Marketing Channels
The next step is selecting the most telling performance metrics for each marketing channel you use, based on your goals.
Common Marketing Agency Channels
Most agencies utilize both broad and targeted outreach across these core channels:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
- Social Media Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Direct Mail
- Public Relations
- Events/Webinars
To maximize results, identify the vital few KPIs per channel that indicate performance towards your goals.
Key KPIs by Popular Marketing Channel
SEO
- Organic traffic
- Keyword rankings
- Backlinks
- Site authority metrics
PPC
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
- Cost-per-click (CPC)
- Conversion rate
- Cost per acquisition
Social Media
- Engagement rate
- Click-through rate
- Follower growth
- Sales attributed to social
Content Marketing
- Blog traffic
- Lead generation from content
- Content shares/backlinks
- Sales attributed to content
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
- Unsubscribe rate
PR
- Share of voice
- Brand mentions
- Traffic from earned media
- Improved brand perception metrics
Track both quantitative and qualitative KPIs. Hard metrics show immediate ROI while brand/relationship metrics indicate long-term impact.
Step 3: Set Targets and Track Your Progress
Once you’ve identified your KPIs, it’s vital to set specific targets and closely monitor progress over time. This keeps your agency on track to achieve its goals.
Set SMART Targets
For each KPI, set a SMART target:
- Specific: Establish numerical objectives like “10% increase” rather than vague ones like “boost”.
- Measurable: Choose quantifiable KPIs that can be regularly measured.
- Achievable: Targets should be challenging but within realistic reach.
- Relevant: Each target should map directly to one of your defined goals.
- Time-bound: Set a timeframe for achieving the target e.g. monthly.
Here’s an example SMART target:
“Increase organic website traffic by 15% month-over-month for the next quarter via SEO.”
Regularly Track Performance
Once you’ve set targets, track performance against those benchmarks on an ongoing basis through:
- Campaign analytics
- Dashboards
- Automated reporting
- Weekly/monthly performance reviews
This regular tracking identifies what’s working well and areas to improve.
Make sure to measure consistently – calculate monthly rather than daily or weekly for a better trend view. Look at performance by channel, campaign, and other dimensions.
Optimize Based on Insights
Use target vs. actual performance data to guide your agency’s optimization efforts.
For example, if social media engagement is below target you may invest more in producing engaging content. If conversion rates dip, re-evaluating landing pages, offers and NSD.
Continuously refine approach to meet KPI targets that propel you towards your business goals.
Step 4: Use KPIs to Improve Your Marketing Campaigns
The real value of tracking KPIs is using insights to refine and optimize your agency’s marketing efforts for maximum results.
Identify Trends and Patterns
Look for trends, correlations and patterns in the performance data over set periods of time, such as:
- Certain campaign types or assets that drive more conversions
- Seasonal or day-of-week patterns in engagement
- Traffic and lead sources that convert better
- Changes since launching a new campaign or initiative
Uncover Issues and Obstacles
Declining KPIs signal potential issues to address. For example:
- Lower click-through rates could indicate ineffective ad messaging
- Increased bounce rates may signify poor page experience
- Less social traffic could mean your content has missed the mark
Proactively find and fix pain points.
Align Future Plans and Investment
Use insights from past performance when planning and budgeting. KPIs help you determine:
- Which campaigns to expand vs cut
- Channels to invest more or less in
- New opportunities or areas to test
- Ways to improve existing approaches
Basing decisions on hard data ensures you maximize ROI of time, money and resources.
Refine Campaigns and Assets
Specific KPI dips highlight where campaigns or assets need refinement, such as:
- Re-evaluating underperforming landing pages
- Tweaking PPC ads that aren’t delivering results
- Overhauling email automations with low open rates
- Creating new social content and offers if engagement drops
Optimization is key to pushing KPIs upwards towards your targets.
Identifying and monitoring the right KPIs is crucial for marketing agencies to benchmark success, enhance ROI, and align work to strategic objectives.
To recap, optimizing your agency’s KPI tracking process involves:
- Defining your business goals and matching KPIs to each one
- Selecting the vital few KPIs per marketing channel to track
- Setting specific, quantitative targets for each KPI
- Consistently measuring performance against targets
- Leveraging insights from KPIs to improve campaigns
By regularly analyzing your progress against meaningful KPIs, you can continuously refine approach to maximize marketing success, return on investment, and progress towards strategic goals.
What are the one or two most important KPIs for your agency to track right now? Set a benchmark, monitor performance, and use the data to guide marketing decisions. Targeted KPI tracking will help propel your agency forward.
