Digital Marketing KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are metrics that are related directly to your digital marketing efforts. Whether you are advertising on social media, continually building your SEO strategy, advertising through the google network, building organic brand awareness, etc. To name a few, this data includes your website traffic, online revenue, page conversion rate, engagement rate, and bounce rate.

It is crucial to the success of any digital marketing to be able to monitor how these efforts are performing so you can have a clear understanding of what’s working and what needs improvement. For example, your marketing campaign that your business just launched, looks and sounds amazing, but how can you tell if it’s working or not? Your phone has been ringing like it always does but you aren’t sure if it’s because of your campaign, or from a referral. Sound familiar? This is where your KPI’s come into play. So, no matter what marketing channels you’re utilizing, here are the most important digital marketing KPI’s of 2020 that you need to know.

Engagement Metrics

This metric basically represents how often your brand is interacted with through a number of social platforms.

Some of the most important engagement metrics include:

• Post / Photo Likes, Comments, Retweets, Shares
• Post Engagement Rate
  • The number of engagements divided by the number of impressions or each that particular post has. When you have a high engagement rate, it’s a good indicator that your post resonated with your audience.
• Account Mentions / Organic Mentions
  • When your brand is being organically mentioned outside of a reply or comment shows that you are building your brand awareness.
• Awareness Metrics
  • The next two awareness metrics can often be confused but can be equally important to understand depending on the goals of your marketing strategy.
    • Impressions – the number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not.
    • Reach – The potential unique viewers a post could have (usually your follower count plus accounts that shared the post’s follower counts).
• ROI Metrics
  • Conversions Metrics – This is when someone takes action on your site and “converts” into a lead or makes a purchase. Although this is the metric that can easily be focused on the most, make sure you are paying attention to the smaller metrics because they are indicating how your ad or post led to the conversion and can help you make adjustments if necessary.

PPC campaigns come in various forms so its important to now how much you are spending, which ads are successfully performing, and how your ads stack up against your business’s competition.

• Clicks – Clicks are the foundation metric. Every lead or conversion starts with a click and is usually a good indicator that your ads are gaining traction. 
• Cost Per Click – No matter what your budget is, knowing exactly how much you are paying per click will help you understand what you’re paying, compensates for the revenue being generated from the conversions of the ad.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – CTR is measured by dividing the total number of clicks your campaign got in the month (or period being reported) by its total impressions. Although there is no perfect CTR, a higher CTR indicates that your business’s ads are resonating and enticing a consumer to click your ad. If your CTR is low, (under 2%) changing the ad copy and visuals is a great place to start to see which combination gets a better response.
• Cost Per Acquisition/Conversion (CPA) – This metric indicates how much you are paying for every conversion from your ads. There are many types of conversions you can create but if your product costs $50, and you have a CPA of $75, you are losing money. Try changing your bidding strategy or max keyword bid to get those numbers lower so you can start making money.
• Conversion Rate – The number of conversions a campaign has received, divided by the total clicks. This metric is tracked to indicate the success of a campaign. Lower conversion rates can indicate your ads are requiring more clicks in order to educate and convert a consumer into a customer. A higher conversion, typically above 5%, shows that your campaign is resonating well with your target audience.
• Quality Score – Google’s Quality Score represents how relevant your ads and keywords are to your business’s landing pages and website. On a 1-10 scale, the lower your quality score, the less relevant Google considers your ads to be and will actually charge you more per click. The higher your quality score, the higher your ad will rank with a lower cost. This is due to the fact that Google wants to serve its users with the best options possible, so try to keep your ads above a 6 when possible.

Search Engine Optimization takes time, effort, and money. If you want to make sure that this investment is worth it, your business needs to be able to track its success and understand what these SEO KPI’s mean.

• Organic Search Traffic – Plain and simple, this is the most important metric you need to track to measure SEO success. It is the goal of almost every SEO Strategy to increase your business’s visibility in search engines. The more your business’s website is visible, the more organic traffic you should receive if done correctly.
• CTR – This metric is one of the best ways to track the effectiveness and attractiveness of your pages in search results for users. If you have a low CTR, try adjusting your website’s page titles and meta descriptions.
• Rankings/Position – Keyword rankings refer to your web page’s position within search results for a particular keyword search query. This can be revered as the prize metric for search engine optimizations, just make sure you are tracking the proper keywords that will bring in the traffic your business needs.
• Organic Clicks/Impressions – Clicks to your site or Impressions of your search results page listing, that were earned when a user searches your business name, product or service in a search engine.
• Organic Conversion Rate – A conversion on your site that came specifically from organic traffic.
• Links – since search engines are geared towards the intent of the searcher, building high-quality links on your business’s site is confirmed by Google to be one of the top 3 ranking factors in its current algorithm. Building links on your site doesn’t mean creating more navigation bars or menus. SEO is all about content strategy. Writing fresh and relevant content that gets linked to other credible, high authority websites is where the magic happens. This requires strategy and is where the majority of work happens in your business’s SEO strategy. The more quality links your website contains, the more trust Google builds with your businesses brand, the higher your business’s website ranks in the SERP.

While all of these metrics have their own place and importance in Digital Marketing, its important to make sure that you align these KPIs with your goals. Don’t pursue and report only the vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are KPIs that look amazing on paper but aren’t accomplishing your goals. You may have an app that has over 200,000 total downloads but only have 200 active monthly users. Be sure to hold your business accountable to the metrics that matter. Whether they look amazing on paper or reveal that your brilliant ad copy did not convert leads, good and bad metrics are tools your business needs to utilize to be able to adapt and improve your ongoing digital marketing.