February 15, 2022

The Purpose of Marketing Analytics And What Metrics You Should Be Tracking

The Purpose Of Marketing Analytics And What Metrics You Should Be Tracking

Without measuring your campaign’s performance by tracking certain metrics, you’ll never know what’s working or what isn’t. 

It’s hard to manage something you cannot measure, right? How will you know if your campaign is performing well, or performing at all? How do you know if your ideal target audience is responding to your messaging?

Marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) are quantifiable marketing metrics that organizations track in order to measure their progress towards a specific goal within your marketing channels. 

Like we say time and time again, marketing is about testing! Testing, testing, and more testing. Measuring the right marketing KPIs allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts while enforcing your strategy over the long term.

There are a few important metrics that you always want to be tracking to make sure your campaigns are performing.

Keep reading to learn 10 important marketing metrics you should be tracking!

AU BLOG The Purpose of Marketing Analytics And What Metrics You Should Be Tracking

1. Return On Investment (ROI)

The purpose of measuring your return on investment is to evaluate if your marketing efforts are contributing to profit. Having a positive return on investment means your marketing campaigns are bringing in more money than what’s being spent to run them.

2. Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

Calculating return on ad spend is a more specific KPI you can measure to determine the success of advertising campaigns. This metric measures the revenue that’s generated compared to every dollar you spend on an ad campaign. It’s usually presented as a ratio.ROAS can also help make decisions about where to focus your marketing budget. For example, one campaign may be generating a significant amount more return compared to another campaign.

3. Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is the percentage of people who have shown interest in your products or services and have converted. Knowing your conversion rate is the easiest way to find out how well your campaign is performing and how people are reacting to it.

Conversion rate = # of converted leads/total leads X 100

4. Conversion Rate – By Channel

When marketing, you’re most likely running multiple campaigns across multiple channels. Measuring the performance across all channels is essential to maximizing your lead conversion rate by learning which channel generates the most qualified leads. Is your blog generating leads? Email prospecting? Social media? It’s important to know these things so you can optimize your strategy and maximize your results!

5. Cost Per Lead (CPL)

Cost per lead is simply the cost you pay to acquire a new prospect through advertising online. Knowing and measuring your CPL per campaign enables sales and marketing teams to set their sales goals, calculate potential ROI, and determine advertising budgets.

Cost per lead = The cost for each lead generation / The total # of leads generated on that campaign

6. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rates (CTR) are important metrics to measure because they help you helps understand your customers. It can show you exactly what is working and what isn’t. If you notice a campaign with a below-average click-through rate, you can probably conclude that you are either targeting the wrong audience or you’re not speaking their language persuasively enough to convince them to click.

7. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that has shown interest in your company and could turn into a qualified prospect if the relationship is further nurtured. Understanding this number is great for your marketing team to see exactly how many leads they are bringing in with their efforts. Learn about MQLs in our podcast episode Prospects vs. Leads vs. Qualified Leads.

8. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)

If you nurture an MQL properly, they can eventually become an SQL, a sales-qualified lead. SQLs are those who have already talked to someone on your sales team and have already been qualified as a lead by your marketing team. Integrating your sales team and marketing team is beneficial to converting MQLs to SQLs and truly understanding their entire journey. Read more about aligning your sales and marketing team here!

9. Website Visitors

In marketing, attracting customers to your companies products or services is the main goal. And the best way to do that is by generating traffic to your website. Website visitors are important to track because they can contribute to the overall success of a campaign. If you’re tracking website traffic from a social media campaign, you’ll be able to see how many referrals your social team has sent to your website. If you’re looking at organic traffic, you’ll be measuring the effectiveness of SEO.

10. Organic Traffic

As stated above, generating organic traffic to your website involves search engine optimization (SEO). To track this you’ll want to look at your keyword performance. Your keywords will tell you where you are ranking on different search engines. Learn more about SEO here.

KPIs are important because they help you understand your success as a marketer. They give you the insights you need to make more informed decisions that ultimately have an effect on not just your marketing, but your entire company. 

Looking for more insights on how to track your campaigns? Schedule a FREE strategy session with us and we’ll give you personalized insights on your B2B marketing budget.

For more helpful information on B2B Marketing check out our resource library!

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