Which KPIs should you measure?
Solid Digital’s Digital Growth™ Marketing program uses four metrics that we believe every marketing department should be consistently measuring and tracking:
- The number of content pieces created
- The number of your organic website visitors
- The number of keywords ranking in the top 20 search results
- The number of conversions or goals achieved
Each of these four KPIs complete the picture of your company’s website marketing health. Here’s why Solid Digital chose these measurements:
- Unique and valuable content drives visitors to your website, and creating content consistently is an overall good habit to start with for a healthy digital growth trajectory.
- Looking at the number of your organic visitors shows you that your site content is resulting in clicks from search engine results.
- Note: We do not use the sum of total website visitors, since some may be coming from paid ads or email marketing that can fluctuate wildly based on spend. Only adding up the number of visitors who have arrived to your website through organic search is an indicator that tells the story of how your website is performing month over month.
- Target keywords are vital to staying in touch with your audience, and ensuring you have enough higher-ranking keywords (in the top 20, or on the first two results pages) will help you be more visible and therefore get more visitors and help your overall domain authority.
- Conversions tell you whether all of the above is working (because you have to have visibility and engagement prior to conversions). Choose the method of conversion measurement based on your company’s goals. What will signify whether a lead has converted? A newsletter signup or a whitepaper download? A form fill or quote request? A purchase from your ecommerce site?
How to Measure Marketing KPIs and Why
Next, the nitty gritty. The measurement of your website KPIs is essential to understanding what your Digital Value is currently, and how you can increase it. (For an even nitterier grittier nitty gritty, check out our Marketing Directors Guide to Increasing Digital Value.)
Content: Because we know there will be peaks and valleys, we measure over a 3-month period and average that number for calculating Digital Value. First, set a goal that that sounds reasonable looking forward – we typically begin with ten pieces per month. This is valuable to measure because content must stay consistent in order to create a habit. Without fresh content, your site will become stagnant and invaluable to visitors, and it will not have more opportunity to show up in organic search, which leads us to the next point:
Organic Visitors: Measure your visitors through Google Analytics (it’s free and easy to set up). The number of organic visitors indicates whether your keywords are working or not. If they’re not, recalibrate and reconsider your keywords or content methods.
Target Keywords: Search results will tell you whether your target keywords are successful. The goal is to be found for the ideas, thoughts, and phrases that you have identified as important. Make sure that your site is functional and crawlable, proving that your website is optimized–one more step in the funnel.
Conversions: These are measured by how many visitors are converting on your website–a click-through rate in a way from step one. Basically: how many visitors are going from organic search to your website to your desired CTA button/form submission? The conversion rate is your endgame–whether you want their information, a sale or partnership to grow your business.
How the KPIs are Related
The four metrics are all interlinked, and when one part isn’t working well, adjustments need to be made. Content with targeted keywords helps with obtaining organic visitors that will in turn convert to obtaining information or sales. When you’re using KPIs and tracking monthly Digital Value with them, you’ll be able to see specific action items that affect the KPIs. Whatever is working or not working can be increased, decreased, and reiterated based on your results. Because the Digital Growth program involves an actual number (or score) this data can show concrete improvement that can later be shared with the leadership team. If a website redesign is imminent, it’s best to set up your goals before you hit “publish” so you can measure and attain your biggest KPIs through Digital Growth.
What to Expect When Measuring Digital Marketing KPIs
Once you begin measuring and working towards improving your digital marketing KPIs, it’s difficult to contain your excitement and not expect monumental change (or is that just us??). One thing to keep in mind here – not all numbers typically shoot up at once.
Content is, once again, king–especially when it comes to impacting other metrics that may be lagging behind. If you begin posting new content (blogs, for example) you might not see an immediate rise in organic visitors, keywords showing in the top 20, or more conversions. It takes time and consistency, but time and again we’ve seen this habit produce positive results. Instead of immediate movement in the numbers, watch for metrics improvement over a period of a few months. Any time you change a methodology, your numbers might go up and down here and there. The bottom line here is: visibility leads to engagement which leads to conversions (when done thoughtfully and methodically).
Conclusion: How Digital Growth KPIs Work For You
Tracking Digital Value, and taking action to increase it, helps create habits. Those habits will help you grow your team and your budget through solid statistics that prove the value of your entire team and your digital marketing efforts, and enable you to test different marketing channels and successfully support your company as it expands.
Our goal at Solid Digital is to get marketing teams in a consistent routine – tracking and measuring and adjusting throughout the process. When teams are able to show the value of marketing to leadership in their organization, they can grow confidently–with the data to back it up.
