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Written by Terkel
What is one KPI a small business should measure in digital marketing?
To help small businesses get the most ROI from digital marketing, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their insights. From tracking customer lifetime value to conversion rates, there are several KPIs to measure for improving digital marketing success.
Here are 11 KPIs to measure in digital marketing:
- Read the Signs With Bounce Rates
- Track Average Time on Site to Monitor Content
- Evaluate Customer Acquisition Costs for Overall Strategy
- Optimize Profits by Checking Customer Lifetime Value
- Focus on Engagement With Email Click-Through Rate
- Look to Conversion Rates to Determine Campaign Success
- Make SMART Goals to Grow Your Business
- Check Website Traffic for a Macro View
- Review Total Return on Ad Spend for Marketing ROI
- Watch Cost Per Click to Help Strategize
- Observe Assisted Revenue to Track Marketing Channels
Read the Signs With Bounce Rates
Your bounce rate is a clear indicator that your digital marketing strategies are working (or not!). A bounce rate will let you know whether your website has a broken link or if your content does not match search intent. When your bounce rate is high, it may be a sign that you need to revamp your strategy.
Beth Baranski, Markitors
Track Average Time on Site to Monitor Content
If you want to know if people are reading your content, you need to keep them on your website. The average time on site is a good metric that tells you how much time people spend reading your content. This will help you understand what kind of news and topics they are interested in and if there is something you need to improve.
Raaquib Pathan, Salesmate
Evaluate Customer Acquisition Costs for Overall Strategy
When you have a small business, every dollar of your marketing budget counts. Evaluating your customer acquisition costs (the money spent marketing your business per customer) not only after each campaign but quarterly as a whole will help you evaluate whether the results of your marketing efforts are worth the cost spent to get those campaigns running. Obviously, you want to keep this number low, but if this metric seems high, then you’re going to want to pivot your strategies for future marketing strategies.
Brandon Brown, Grin
Optimize Profits by Checking Customer Lifetime Value
By tracking customer lifetime value, businesses can gain insight into the average worth of existing customers. That way, they can determine whether acquiring new customers will result in a financial gain or loss. Businesses can use this information to develop solid strategies that will allow them to optimize profitability.
Haim Medine, Mark Henry Jewelry
Focus on Engagement With Email Click-Through Rates
Simply pouring all your hard work and resources into well-crafted emailers isn’t enough. You need to validate how well they’re performing. Email click-through rate is an important metric that sheds light on whether your customers are engaging with your marketing emails or not.
By dividing the number of clicks generated from an email marketing campaign with the total number of emails sent, you can calculate what your email click-through rate is.
Harry Morton, LowerStreet
Look to Conversion Rates to Determine Campaign Success
While there are numerous KPIs that can provide a company with valuable insight, the one that really tells you how your campaigns are doing is your conversion rates. Sure, a user may visit your site or even click on your ad. But do they actually convert? While it doesn’t all fall on the bottom line, it’s definitely something important to focus on.
Lauren Kleinman, The Quality Edit
Make SMART Goals to Grow Your Business
Goal completion is the one KPI small businesses should measure in digital marketing. They should set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and find ways to achieve them. As a startup, you should keep track of the goals to be completed by a specific time and confirm if you are hitting them. If not, look to see if there are issues with your criteria or marketing strategy.
Katherine Brown, Spyic
Check Website Traffic for a Macro View
One KPI that all small businesses should be measuring is website traffic. This KPI keeps track of how many people are visiting your website during a given timeframe. Monitoring your website helps you figure out if your website is capturing visitors’ attention, if your ads have good placement, and the average amount of time users spend on your site.
Justin Chan, June Shine
Review Total Return on Ad Spend for Marketing ROI
It’s not just channel-specific. Return on ad spend (ROAS) looks at the overall marketing picture. How much money is going out for marketing? How much are we making? How much do we need to be making to support our margins? It’s the digital marketing form of ROI, and it’s super critical.
Andreea Borcea, Dia Creative
Watch Cost Per Click to Help Strategize
Small businesses should measure cost per click, or CPC, to know whether they are getting a good ROI on their advertising. The goal is to pay a low cost and receive a high number of clicks. However, this all depends on how much the highest bidder is willing to pay for online ad placements. Businesses must keep in mind that if there is a lower proportion of ad clicks to CPC, then they need to rethink their advertising strategy.
Desiree Medellin, Peels
Observe Assisted Revenue to Track Marketing Channels
Assisted revenue is a native Google Analytics KPI that allows you to see the role each of your marketing channels played in ‘assisting conversions.’ For example, a user might have found you on Google but then typed your URL in directly. If you use assisted revenue as a KPI, then organic would get a piece of that conversion attribution.
As a small business, you’re likely involved in more than one marketing channel, and assisted revenue makes it easy to see which are contributing and at what point in the buying process.
Sylvia Kang, Mira
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