How do you know if a strategy, be it sales or marketing, is achieving the desired results? If you have answered that accompanying the performance of their actions, you have guessed right! and this time we will teach you an effective way to do it by teaching you what KPIs are, how and when to use them.
Closely monitoring actions helps to identify what is working or not, this being one of the best ways to determine the success of a strategy. But, to do this accompaniment in the correct way, it is necessary to define what numbers we are going to observe.
And this is where KPIs come into play!
In this post you will learn what they are, which are the main ones and how to choose the ones that make the most sense for your strategy.
Let’s go there?
What are KPIs?
The acronym KPI comes from the English Key Performance Indicator and it means in spanish key performance indicator.
But what does this mean for a business?
The main function of a KPI is to measure the performance of a business or a strategy. It can be a company, aa sales team or a launch campaign, for example.
With the enormous flow of information to which we are exposed today, there are hundreds of indicators that can be followed, although the important thing is to know which KPIs deserve to be observed.
Basically, a KPI is any data that helps to understand the operation and results of a strategy.
Although with a single number, without other data to establish comparisons, it is difficult to demonstrate if a strategy is, in fact, working or not.
Therefore, do not waste your time and energy collecting a lot of information without being clear about the purpose of each one of them.
Focus on collecting really important data for the development of your business and that really help you manage your project in a professional and lucrative way.
What is the difference between metric and KPI?
Despite the similarity, don’t confuse KPIs with metrics.
Metric is everything that can be measured, metrified. That is, it is data that may or may not be relevant to the decision-making process of your business.
These data alone do not indicate whether an action or strategy is achieving the desired results, something very different from what KPIs are.
(To learn more about this topic, read our post ).
Now, when a metric becomes an important factor when defining actions, that’s where it becomes a KPI.
In other words, KPIs are not metrics, but a metric can become a KPI.
What types of KPIs are there?
Actually we can find several types, but here we are going to mention only those that are the most used KPIs in the .
Ahead!
Conversion rate
This KPI mainly refers to the number of visitors that your strategy leads to carry out an action.
There are several types of conversion. It is very important, for example, to know how many visitors to your site downloaded an ebook or signed up for your blog’s newsletter, as this rate will help you define the content that you can write or update to please your audience even more.
(Take a look at our post to understand what is the ).
Traffic origin (organic and paid)
Understanding how your traffic is distributed is essential for a successful website or blog.
Regarding the origin of the traffic, there is no perfect metric, since each blog has its particularities and regardless of being from the same or not, you can count on traffic originating from several or few channels.
The most relevant data that must be taken into account in this case are the channels with a high rejection rate.
If visitors from Instagram increase the rejection rate of your site, for example, make sure that the links of your content published in this network match the text of the article published in the blog.
You can also analyze mobile device traffic from Facebook, since most of its content is consumed through them.
Basically there are the types of traffic:
Organic traffic:
Represents traffic from search engines. That is, the one not obtained through means of payment.
Direct traffic:
This is direct traffic to your site, such as when someone types your domain address directly into the address bar or when they come to your site through bookmarks.
Paid traffic:
It is the traffic received through sponsored ads on platforms such as Facebook and .
If your data strongly points to a single traffic source, for example, 90% of all your traffic comes from organic search, this may indicate that you are not distributing your traffic correctly or that your investment in ads is not working.
For this reason it is important that you diversify your traffic sources so as not to run the risk of depending on a single channel.
To do this you can do things like create social networks, which should offer quality content and optimized for search engines, or seek alliances with other sites in your niche.
lead acquisition
The speed with which a company achieves is certainly the best KPI example to measure your success.
As this allows you some predictability in the sales process, the number of leads that enter the top of the funnel will help you determine the final result of the same.
Blog and newsletter subscribers
The number of subscribers to your blog or It will also be one of the key KPIs for your digital marketing strategy.
With this indicator it is possible to obtain various important information, such as the number of visitors who become subscribers and later customers.
Thus, with the numbers on the success and rejection rates in hand, you can take measures aimed at improving the results.
pageviews
This KPI consists of the number of views your page receives and the time users spend on it.
If a lot of visitors are quickly coming in and out of your site, this could mean, for example, that the page they tried to access has something wrong with the design or layout. they are not attractive.
Now, if the dwell time is high, that means your titles are interesting, your design is attractive, and everything is working fine.
social interactions
They are related to the likes, the number of times a publication is shared and the comments on your posts and content.
But be careful with so-called vanity metrics, that is, those that give us a certain sense of success but do not really give us relevant information about whether our strategy is generating results or not.
Think only of the most significant indicators for your business (what are they and what makes them a KPI).
For example, comments and the number of times a publication is shared are important to determine its effectiveness, as they show if your leads and customers are engaged with your proposal.
Likes are also important, especially when the goal of a campaign is to reach many people.
Most read content
This type of KPI is relevant both for the maintenance of content and for the creation of new, or for the restructuring of what is already published.
When creating new articles, try to take advantage of the resources that worked in the previous one or change what did not give the expected results.
Thus, KPI indicators are what allow successful formulas to be reproduced and even created.
New and returning visitors
This KPI consists of separately registering the visitors who recently started accessing your site and those who are already constantly visiting it.
With this indicator it is possible to create specific actions to reach each of these groups.
Best landing pages
As in the case of the most read content KPI, this indicator allows you to identify and replicate those formulas that are most effective when it comes to improving your .
How to choose your KPIs?
The choice of the most important KPIs depends on an analysis of the market in which you operate and the situation in which your company is at any given time.
After all, it is possible that an indicator is important now and in a few months it will no longer make sense to accompany it.
The startupFor example, they may want to give preference to lead acquisition metrics, as they grow quickly, while more established companies in the market may want to pay more attention to the conversion rate.
For this reason, the main KPI indicators of a company can change according to the moment in which it is and with the way in which it has decided to position itself in the market.
In addition to this internal analysis, it is essential that the company also carry out an external one, to find out which companies with similar characteristics have searched for and optimized their performance using such indicators.
In short, it is about understanding that applying KPI indicators in your business is of the utmost importance and that this is directly linked to the success of your company.
For this reason, we invite you to analyze which are the most necessary for the moment your company is living now and to use them without moderation.
To finish, and now that you understand what KPIs are and have known the main ones for a digital business, take the opportunity to see this other post with which you will learn to .
This post was originally published in April 2018 and has been updated to contain more complete and accurate information.
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