Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are essential tools digital strategists keep in their back pocket at all times. Strategists use KPIs for several things, but most importantly to measure the success of their digital campaigns.
What is a KPI?
A KPI is a measurable value used to evaluate the success of a campaign or tactic. They are created to track progress in achieving digital or marketing objectives. KPIs are aligned with strategic goals and provide insights by tracking specific metrics. Strategists, marketers, graphic designers, all team members can measure the success of their work with the help of KPIs.
Why KPIs are important
KPIs are important for several different reasons. Let’s walk through a few of those, in no specific order of course.
- Tracking Success: KPIs allow you to track the success of your campaigns or tactics and evaluate the effectiveness of your chosen strategy.
- Informed Decision-making: KPIs enable you to identify both the strengths and weaknesses of your campaigns by offering concrete data, which you can leverage to make informed decisions and optimizations regarding the campaign.
- Real-Time Optimizations: One of the greatest advantages of setting KPIs is the ability to make real-time optimizations. You can adjust tactics, messaging, and budgets while campaigns are still active. This ensures that your campaigns stay aligned with your overall objectives throughout the flight.
- Analyze Strategies: Analyzing strategies with KPIs involves comparing your results to your set metrics. Once this comparison is made, you can reflect on your tactics and assess performance. This process allows for effective adjustments, and possible strategic improvements.
How to set a KPI
When setting KPIs for a digital campaign, there are many things to take into account. Here are some important ones to focus on:
- Define Your Digital Objectives: Ensure that your KPI metrics are closely aligned with your campaign goals.
- Choose Relevant Metrics: Select KPIs that make sense with your campaign tactics. For example, the success of promoted posts is most often measured by Engagement Rate. You might want to track cost per conversion or click-through-rate (CTR) for website click ads, or view rate for reels and videos.
- Research Industry Benchmarks: Look into industry standards to set realistic and competitive goals.
- Utilize Historical Data: Use past performance data to inform and refine your KPIs. You may want to stay flat from what you’ve achieved previously, or you may want to set KPIs that stretch your growth. Just keep in mind, they should be realistic!
- Account for Your Budget: Align your KPIs with your campaign budget in order to set realistic benchmarks. For example, smaller budgets mean fewer eyeballs. If you’re generating awareness and measuring success by impressions, your spend will directly impact your result. Consider KPIs that aren’t affected by budget, like engagement rate and conversion rate.
How to use KPIs
After setting KPIs for a specific campaign or tactic, it is then time to retrieve the most information you can from them. The great thing about KPI’s is that you can gain insights from them before, during, and after your digital campaigns or tactics.
Using your KPIs before a campaign goes live can help you to predict performance and give you a solid foundation if you have no historical data to work from.
Using your KPI during your campaign is where you’ll see a lot of the benefit to KPIs. Your KPIs inform you on how your campaign is performing in real-time and has put you in a place where you can make optimization to increase performance if needed.
Using your KPIs once a campaign has ended is a great way to reflect on the strategy you chose and how it played out. You can analyze your data and adjust or change your strategy before your next launch in order to increase performance.
Industry Benchmarks for Common Tactics
Although the digital space is always changing, and it sometimes feels like new tactics are introduced every day, digital strategists still have their staple tactics they know and trust. Since these tactics are so common there are industry benchmarks or KPIs that strategists are trying to outperform every time they launch a campaign. As stated above these benchmarks can be used to help a strategist define their own KPIs if no historical data is available. RivalIQ has a host of social media benchmarks listed by industry and WordStream lists Google Ads benchmarks by industry.
KPIs Benefit Everyone
Key Performance Indicators are a digital strategist staple, but an entire organization can reap the benefits of setting KPIs. Setting and exceeding KPIs doesn’t just track performance; it creates a culture of achievement and continuous improvement.
If you need help measuring—or achieving—digital campaign success, let’s talk! We’d be more than happy to nerd out with you.
