Digital Marketing KPIs You Should Be Looking at in 2024
When you dedicate valuable time and money into your marketing efforts, you want to know what kind of returns you're getting on that investment. But it's not always easy to figure out exactly what convinced a new customer to get in touch, or what pieces of your digital marketing strategy are most effective.
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are essential tools for evaluating your marketing channels. Let's look at a few KPIs that will help you get more from your digital marketing in 2024.
What Is a KPI in Digital Marketing?
KPIs are metrics that calculate progress toward a specific business goal. They help teams make sense of raw data and measure success in many different parts of a business, from research and development to customer account renewal.
Digital marketing KPIs are all about measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing strategy. They're essential for tracking the results of specific campaigns, and they help you evaluate the overall success of your digital marketing efforts.
Tracking digital marketing KPIs lets you do more with your marketing resources. It helps you:
- Measure progress: Track which marketing initiatives meet or surpass their goals.
- Identify improvement targets: Flag underperforming campaigns, assets, or teams and channel resources to strengthen them.
- Guide decision-making: Develop a data-driven strategy that uses more of what works and less of what doesn't.
- Optimize your budget: Allocate spending to channels and campaign types with the best return on investment (ROI).
Most importantly, digital marketing KPIs boil down your results into concrete numbers. Tracking results over time is always easier with numerical data, and that's what KPIs provide.
Digital Marketing KPIs to Measure in 2024
There are dozens of digital marketing metrics, but the most important digital marketing KPIs to measure depend on your target audience, broader market trends, and your individual business goals. These metrics offer essential and actionable insights and are simple to track without expensive software.
Here are some of the most important digital marketing KPIs you should track in 2024:
Website Visits
Your monthly website traffic is an essential indicator of brand health. The more website visits you have, the more potential customers your marketing efforts are bringing to your door.
You can determine which campaigns and strategies work hardest for you by measuring traffic to specific pages. For example, certain blog posts attract more organic traffic than others. Those topics resonate with your audience, and emphasizing those keywords in future posts can help you rank higher in search engines.
It's important to track traffic within your site as well. Pay special attention to your homepage, product or service pages, and landing pages. Look at which of those pages have the highest conversion rate and identify what they have in common. Then, you can apply those principles to other pages as well.
How to measure it
Google Analytics is the most accessible tool for tracking website traffic. You'll need a Google account to link to your company website.
Once you've created that link, you can log onto your Analytics dashboard anytime and view your traffic from various channels, including organic search and paid ads.
How to improve it
There are two ways to attract more website traffic, and both have their strengths and weaknesses:
- Increase your spending on pay-per-click (PPC) digital advertising
- Strengthen your search engine optimization (SEO) by optimizing your web content, using more internal links, and building backlinks to improve your organic search ranking
Paid advertising gets results faster. Your ad can show up on target audiences' search results pages as soon as you launch the campaign. This strategy incurs more up-front costs, but you'll be able to set a budget to control your spending.
SEO takes longer to work, but the results are longer-lasting. Ad campaigns only run as long as you pay for them, but a well-optimized website drives traffic long-term.
By investing in both strategies, you can set your business up for both short-term and long-term success.
Page Views
Page views reflect the number of times people have visited or refreshed your page. The more page views, the more appealing your content is to visitors.
How to measure it
Google Analytics will track your page views automatically once you connect your account. You also have the option to send page views manually if you change your settings.
How to improve it
You need to strengthen your website's user experience to get more page views. Your goal is to keep visitors clicking from one page to the next, eager to learn more. If you're struggling with low page views, there are a few things that can help:
- Improve your page load speeds
- Cut content that doesn't move people forward
- Suggest related content in a sidebar
- Link to related pages on your site
Every page on your website should include at least one relevant internal link. Most should have a call-to-action (CTA) that leads the reader to the next logical step you want them to take.
For instance, a landing page might include an opt-in box where a reader signs up for your mailing list. Instead of a static thank-you message after they sign up, invite them to view a related blog post or product category page.
Click-Through Rates
Click-through rate (CTR) measures how often audiences click your CTA links for more information. A high CTR indicates engaging content and compelling CTA copy.
How to measure it
Google's most accessible CTR-tracking solution is the Behavior Flow report, which shows traffic patterns on your website. The report shows how people move from one page to another, including the most common page-to-page pathways and places visitors exit. It shows which pages and CTAs generate the most activity and where people get stuck.
How to improve it
Start by working on your CTAs. Create different versions for each page and run A/B tests to learn which gets the best results. Use that information to determine what wording and style resonates with your audiences, then apply those practices to other pages.
Meanwhile, add more links to pages throughout your site. Link blog posts to related case studies, product pages, and other blog posts. Add more links to landing pages so readers have more chances to convert.
Leads
Before someone becomes a customer, they become a lead.
A lead is a person or organization that shows signs of wanting to buy your product or service. When your number of leads increases, more people are thinking of becoming customers. Tracking lead numbers is an efficient way of measuring the overall success of your marketing efforts.
There are two types of leads you can track:
- Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): someone who has shown a general interest in your business, usually by interacting with your marketing materials
- Sales qualified leads (SQLs): someone who has shown serious interest and is ready to talk to a sales representative about a purchase
MQLs usually arrive via top-of-funnel content, such as blog posts or Facebook ads. SQLs are further along the pipeline and are ready for the push that makes a final sale.
How to measure it
Qualifying or "scoring" leads is a highly individualized process. Your sales and marketing teams rank prospects, usually by giving them a numerical score or letter grade. Lead-scoring software can simplify this process.
How to improve it
Strong marketing generates more leads. If your MQL numbers need a boost, you'll want to work on top-of-funnel content that drives brand awareness.
SQLs come from mid-funnel content, such as case studies, e-books, and webinars — the more informative, the better. If you need more SQLs, focus on the material that leads to consultations or demos.
Digital Marketing KPIs You Can Be Proud Of
Always remember the power of robust KPI data. Your KPIs will show you what works and what doesn't, allowing you to make smarter marketing decisions. This data also helps your marketing team make a strong business case for those decisions, helping everyone on your team stay on the same page.
At Optimize, we're here to help you track, understand, and boost your digital marketing KPIs. We'll also assist you in devising a data-driven strategy that optimizes your return on investment. To learn more about our digital marketing services, schedule a free consultation today.