In general terms, whenever reference is made to the design and implementation of marketing, especially online, certain metrics and analytics appear that are essential for to be able to control and / or manage the status of your business model. Therefore, analytics is estimated as one of the most complex parts of the marketing world.
In this sense, there is a terminology widely used at the business, marketing and other areas of the company that, basically, is distinguished by their ability to control the strategies, processes and resources aimed at achieving objectives of a certain business. Which is known as "KPI" and it's about some management indicators.
Hence, the term KPI It acquires its full potential when digital marketing is linked to Business Intelligence and, given its importance, it is worth knowing what it is for. In addition, it is essential to know the types of KPI that exist, which are the most important of them and some tools that allow you to take charge of the business to grow.
What is a KPI and what are these indicators for in social networks?
Being the acronym for Key Performance Indicator which, in Spanish, means "Key performance indicator" or "Key performance indicator", is defined as a measure that allows specifying whether an action or a set of initiatives are effectively serving the objectives proposed by a brand, organization or company. In other words, it serves to assess the level of performance of a process associated with a prescribed strategy for get the goal.
Thanks to this, the KPIs have the ability to reflect the current state of a business based on a specific area and, through this, it offers the possibility of acting correctly to optimize strategies. Therefore, they are ideal for quantifying the work of the members of a business, in order to improve the efficiency and productivity of one or more services.
Consequently, the main objective of a KPI it is cooperate to make better decision-making regarding the current status of a process, project, strategy or campaign in order to achieve a precise line of future action.
Now, in addition to being characterized by being a number or a percentage, it also has the following characteristics:
- It is measurable in units. Therefore, the KPI they are also known as metrics.
- It is quantifiable, thanks to the fact that it can be measured. In other words, if they are based on monetary units, it would be quantified in dollars ($) or euros (€).
- It's temporary. This means that they should only be measured over time (daily, weekly, monthly or annually).
- Is specific. Therefore, a KPI you always have to focus on one aspect to calculate.
- The KPI they only serve to those factors that are relevant to a certain business. Thus, they must focus on informing, controlling, evaluating and helping to make optimal decisions.
KPI types How is this data classified?
While it's true, exthere is a remarkable infinity of indicators which may be important for a specific strategy, considering that most of the KPI they only make sense if they are based on data or day-to-day evidence. Whereby, various classifications of these elements are distinguished. However, in the first instance, it is recommended to use different kinds of indicators based on the interests of who is analyzing these metrics.
Thus, below, we mention three categories that are distinguished around this peculiarity:
Primary KPIs
As their name implies, they are the main ones for your objective and They let you know if you are helping the company or business to earn more money, basically. Which are generally known as Key Performance Indicators and without a doubt, they are the most important for the directors of the organizations, above the other types.
Thus, it can be known that the primary KPIs of the Digital Marketing and Inbound Marketing strategies refer to one of the following alternatives:
- Traffic.
- Rate Of conversation.
- Leads.
- cost of acquisition by lead.
- Entry total.
- Entry per purchase.
Secondary KPIs
They are those Key Performance Indicators that they focus on reinforcing the primaries and showing their whys, that is to say, they are in charge of justifying the KPIs primary. In this sense, they allow to manifest What are all these tests and the management of the strategy that are on the right path to achieve the stated objective?.
Therefore, this type of indicators are ideal for managers and / or superiors who have the need and the time to analyze them more deeply, in order to work towards a better development of the strategy and make sure you get optimal results.
As an example, we show some secondary Key Performance Indicators of interest:
- Cost per lead at each level of the funnel.
- Cost per visitor.
- Recurring visitors on the blog.
- Subscribers from the blog.
- Subscribers of the newsletter.
- Half price by transition.
- Traffic origin (organic, direct, social networks, email, payment, etc.).
Practical KPIs
Simply, this classification of KPIs brings together a set of tests that must be carried out constantly to demonstrate more detailed data about user behavior, acquisition, and characteristics. Which means that they are essential elements for marketing analysts who must manage and administer a campaign.
In this sense, they refer to a much longer and more specific list of indicators that we reveal to you, below:
- Traffic.
- pages per visit.
- Pageviews.
- Page Rank.
- Best landing pages.
- Social interactions.
- Most searched keywords.
- Bounce rate.
- Visitors (New vs. Recurring).
- Contents most read and / or visited.
On the other hand, an additional classification of the KPIs for check the progress of achieving objectives in different areas of a company.
Some more important examples are:
KPIs sales
- Share market.
- Positioning in the market.
- level billing.
- Cost effectiveness and margin of each product.
- Cost effectiveness average sales.
- Index loyalty.
- Cost by conversion.
- Volume shopping by customer.
- Visits Of customers.
- Ratios Of conversation.
Finance KPIs
- Efficiency of costs.
- TOUCH (Return on capital employed).
- ROI (Return on investment).
- Margin useful.
- Index cost reduction.
- Degree liquidity.
- Performance of the sales force.
- Cost effectiveness.
- Leverage financial.
- Ratio of autonomy.
- Ratio self-financing.
- Ratio coverage.
Logistics KPIs
- Stock breakage of product.
- Stock breakage of raw material.
- Inventory rotation of product.
- Inventory rotation of raw material.
- Medium term of payment.
- Provisioning term or "Lead Time".
- Margin between cost of raw material and total sales.
- Average cost of unit transport.
- Cost of transport on sales.
- Cost per kilometer.
- Mistakes billing.
Retail KPIs
- Frequency of visits.
- Sales per visit.
- Sales per square meter.
- Hours with more traffic.
- Rate conversion by category.
- Sales by category.
- Margin net.
- Loyalty.
- Returns.
- Rotation of stocks.
- Ticket average.
Why is it important to keep an eye on marketing performance KPIs?
Mainly, the importance of KPI in terms of marketing lies in that, its habitual use, allows adjusting the plan in case the results are not aligned with the expectations set. Since, they offer the possibility of monitoring the progress of the marketing plan in order to ensure compliance with the objectives of the business cycle.
Consequently, it is essential that companies get used to measuring the results of the strategies they implement in the field of marketing, through these indicators. In this way, those responsible for all these business actions can acquire relevant information based on the campaign and make the most appropriate decisions. Otherwise, they would be advancing blindly and, of course, wasting numerous resources.
In addition to this, the KPIs reveal optimal benefits that brands and companies must take into account to achieve their lucrative goals, these being another relevant point to justify the importance of these indicators in actions of digital marketing.
Below, we mention those benefits:
- A KPI provides the possibility of perform constant measurements to act flexibly and quickly in optimizing the process to be performed.
- They allow you to redirect your strategy, since they are ideal for learn what works and what doesn't with real data. Also, check if your forecasts are being met or specify that other areas work better to invest in them.
- They are elements adaptable to any business and its continuous changes in the market, with respect to its competition and its clients, as well as around the new opportunities that appear.
- They provide great motivation in the work teams to achieve the objectives set. Taking into account that, if they are considered your comments and your decisions in this regard, they may feel involved with the strategy.
- They have the capacities necessary to reduce your campaign costs. Since, for example, values like cost per conversion They allow you to fully understand the benefits you aspire to and how to get there without much effort.
- Emit faster, better compression and full transparency when communicating results. Therefore, they provide complete precision in decision making.
What are the most important KPIs to watch out for?
It is no secret to anyone that, when selecting KPIs for a certain business or company, it is necessary take into account what really influences this. In other words, the importance of such an indicator lies in the aspirations of a given marketing campaign. However, there are some very important KPIs, generally speaking, that all the people who use these elements must take into account and will have to be attentive as much as possible.
Next, we mention which ones are:
- Sales increase: Their main objective is to demonstrate that your marketing campaign is incurring an absolute increase in sales.
- Return of investment: Is a KPI also know as ROI in which the income generated by a certain campaign must be computed to compare them with the expense they assume.
- Sales funnel: It allows understand the process of how you get customers or sales to optimize it. Valuing that, this KPI It analyzes the customer acquisition process (thoroughly) and therefore, it is divided into five stages (awareness, interest, consideration, preference and purchase).
- Measuring the success rate: Its main purpose is feel the effectiveness of all the actions that help you achieve the defined objectives. Therefore, it is responsible for calculating the number of users that complete a certain marketing objective (such as subscribing to a mailing list).
- Traffic sources: Is a KPI who deals with evaluate each and every one of the means by which you manage to capture visits to the website of your business or company. There are three types that are direct traffic (writing the Url), referral traffic (through links on other websites) and organic traffic (users discover the site on their own).
- Cost per lead: Calculate the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and is highly relevant to quantify the cost or expense of your actions in order to divide it into total leads and know how much said cost per lead will reach. This KPI It can be measured in two ways (general or specific).
- Keyword performance: It is ideal for analyze the ranking of the keywords of your business, in order to estimate the effectiveness of your strategy SEO and thus, specify the traffic of visits that it contributes. For this, it is essential to study keyword lists, increase the CTR and increase the average visit time.
- Visits from mobile devices: From this one KPI, you will be able to know how many users consult and access your content through mobile devices. Deducing like this, if your website has an optimal responsive design.
- Final action rate and range: Consists of an indicator KPI that has the ability to assess the efficiency of your campaign, based on the last action performed by the user who enters your website. Among these actions are: exit, rebound, social, contact, lead and purchase.
- Email Marketing Engagement: This is a type of KPI what achieves compute the thrust of your email marketing strategybasically. It is even useful to measure the ROI, many times. In this way, it allows to analyze click rate, open rate, acquired leads and specific purchases.
List of the best performance measurement tools in social networks
When social media marketing strategies are carried out, that is, on social media platforms; the goals are usually linked to measuring the impact of the actions carried out on the different brand profiles on these sites. With this, it will be possible to determine which actions have had the greatest impact and which are the points that should be improved in the campaign.
But, for this, in addition to taking into account the KPI correct you can also get help directly from tools designed to facilitate performance measurement of social media activities.
Although there are many solutions available, here we recommend three of the best:
HowSociable.com
Mainly, it is a free tool that offers information of great interest to know the status of your brand or company in the social environment and this is revealed by means of a photograph. In addition to this, it contains numerous tools to allow you to get more followers online and be able to increase your presence on social networks.
In that sense, HowSociable is responsible for keeping you up to date through guides and useful tips with which you will increase the value of your profile on social networks, notably. It even contains training courses, conferences and certifications that serve to increase your influence online. Among the metrics they estimate, we find: Characteristic score, support score, confidence score, etc..
SproutSocial.com
It consists of a tool that has the ability to Compare the performance of your brand on social networks compared to that of your competitors, especially within Instagram and Facebook. Accordingly, it provides detailed reports and Include metrics on your audience growth, the most popular posts and hashtags, as well as engagement on Instagram.
Added to that, in Facebook, It allows study the growth of your followers day after day, by publication and engagement in general terms. Additionally, it provides different charts, shows growth trends and patterns, and identifies new followers to understand which publications produced such growth. Due to its effectiveness, more than 20,000 brands use their services.