Digital Marketing KPIs to Track as a Small Business
As a small business owner, understanding the impact of your marketing efforts is crucial for the growth of your biz. Whether you're doing it yourself or hiring an outside agency (like us!), how can you tell what's actually working for you and bringing you the highest return on investment (ROI)? You can't make informed business decisions if you don't have clearly defined goals and aren't measuring your digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) every month. And no, feeling like something is "going well" and "not going well" isn't how you should measure your KPIs. Each platform plays a different role in your marketing strategy (not everything is meant to drive leads instantly), so it's essential to define what's important for your business to ultimately convert your audience into loyal customers.
While we’ve talked about ways to improve your SEO in less than 60 minutes for the biggest impact, how do you know if these SEO tweaks and other digital marketing efforts are really paying off? That’s where tracking your KPIs comes into play! But a KPI is NOT a metric! A metric tells you information about your marketing efforts or content. A KPI tells you how well a specific part of your content strategy performs by measuring it to a particular goal.
Keep reading below to learn the most important KPIs for:
Social media marketing (organic and paid media)
Email marketing
Your website and SEO
If you’re looking to invest in a digital marketing agency that provides a full-service strategy based on your stats and KPIs, let’s chat about how we can make your online presence bigger, badder, and better for more customers and soaring revenue!
“We lead with data. We’re all about making informed decisions, not guesses.”
Tracking Digital Marketing KPIs
Tracking digital marketing KPIs for social media, email marketing, and your website isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, there are specific KPIs you should track for each type of marketing effort.
However, before you start tracking these numbers just for fun, you need to have a content strategy in place and clear goals to measure.
Organic Social Media Management
While we always promote a joint organic and paid social media strategy, if you’re starting out with organic social media management (many of our clients start this way!), here are the most important numbers to track and exactly what they tell you.
Total Impressions
What It Is: The number of times your content is displayed, even to the same person. The higher the number, the more times your content has been viewed.
What It Tells You: As impressions are part of the awareness phase of the customer funnel, they indicate whether you’re achieving your goal of attracting potential customers and drawing people into your social media channels.
Tip: We recommend also looking at the impressions of the different types of content to see what performs best for your audience. (photos, graphics, carousels, reels, etc.).
Total Reach
What It Is: The number of unique people who have seen your content. Unlike impressions, even if the same person views your content multiple times, it’s only counted once.
What It Tells You: It’s a deeper dive into the awareness phase of the customer funnel. While you want to reach a large audience, you want to ensure it’s also a diverse audience with as many potential customers as possible.
Tip: It's also important to consider followers vs. non-followers (most platforms break it down like this). You'll want to reach your current audience and expand to other people (non-followers).
Engagement Rate
What It Is: The engagement rate is the number of engagements (likes, comments, shares, and link clicks) to the number of impressions – the more engagements, the higher your engagement rate.
What It Tells You: Your engagement rate indicates whether your content resonates with your audience and, breaking it down further, which types of content (photos, graphics, carousels, reels, etc.) resonate best with them. It also helps you determine whether you’re targeting the correct audience and ideal client.
Tip: You can calculate your engagement rate using the following formula:
(Engagements (all likes, comments, shares, and link clicks) / Number of Impressions) x 100
Number of Followers
What It Is: How many people are following your social media accounts!
What It Tells You: Tracking this number can ensure you’re reaching the correct audience and that your engagement and hashtag strategies (if relevant) are working. Your number of followers should increase every month!
Link Clicks
What It Is: This number is how often someone has clicked on a link in your social media postings. Depending on the channel, some social media platforms include clicks to your profile and other parts of your account (such as clicking on your email address, a photo, or writing you a direct message). Although you’ve calculated your engagement rate, which includes link clicks, it’s important to record the number of link clicks you have each month separately from the engagement rate.
What It Tells You: Knowing how many link clicks you get (and where they're coming from via social media) can help you determine your audience's interests. It also helps indicate whether your content resonates with your audience and whether they're interested (beyond social media) in learning more about you, your products, or your services.
Traffic from Social
What It Is: This number is the percentage of traffic to your website coming from your social media channels.
What It Tells You: Ultimately, it indicates if your social media strategy is working and you're converting these followers in the customer journey. If people aren't clicking on your website from social media, it's time to (re)evaluate your strategy and change it.
Tip: You’ll need Google Analytics for this one, so make sure your website has it set up! Check out our website and SEO section for more tips!
Paid Social Media Management
If you want to add paid social media management to your organic social media strategy, here are some KPIs you should look at each month to ensure you’re reaching the correct audience and your ideal clients.
Reach
What It Is: Like reach with organic social media, reach with paid social media is the number of unique people who have seen your content.
What It Tells You: This will help you evaluate your audience targeting. If you see a huge reach, it could mean you have a larger target market on social media. However, you want to ensure that it isn’t too large – this all goes back to having proper targeting that gives you a wealth of potential customers but doesn’t unnecessarily target individuals who won’t interact with your content or convert into potential customers.
Cost per Click
What It Is: How much you pay for each click on your ad. Generally, the lower the cost per click, the better your ad is performing.
What It Tells You: Reach and impressions are great, but if nobody clicks on your ad, you need to evaluate whether you need to change up your ad creative, audience targeting, or offer in general.
Tip: You can calculate your cost per click using the following formula:
The number of clicks on an ad / The total ad spend
Conversion Rate
What It Is: Your conversion rate is how often the desired action of your ad is taken. Different ads will have different goals, such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, reaching more of your target audience, etc.
What It Tells You: It can indicate whether your paid ad graphic and/or copy aligns with the ultimate action you want to take. If people are clicking on your ad but ultimately not converting, you’ll want to ensure the copy and visuals between the two are aligned, the process to take action is simple, and you’re targeting the correct audience (this is where A/B testing comes in handy!).
Tip: You can calculate your conversion rate using the following formula:
(Number of conversions / Number of ad interactions) x 100
Email Marketing
Email marketing has one of the highest ROIs and can be a valuable tool for a business looking to reach its ideal customers and ensure customer loyalty. Plus, unlike social media platforms, you’ll always own your marketing list (you never know when a social media platform might be sold or closed!). These are the KPIs we recommend tracking every month:
Open Rate
What It Is: The percentage of people on your email list that actually open your newsletter. You’ll want to aim for a high open rate! While this can vary between industries, the average open rate across the board is around 20%.
What It Tells You: Your open rate ultimately helps you gauge whether people are interested in what you're selling!
Tip: We recommend A/B testing and optimizing subjects, times sent, and the format of your newsletter to see what resonates most with your audience (people might be interested in you and your business, but you’re just not hooking them in properly!). If you’ve seen a sudden spike (or drop) in your open rate, check to see if there’s anything you’ve done differently recently. You can calculate your open rate using the following formula:
(Number of email opens / Number of delivered emails) x 100
Click-Through Rate
What It Is: This is the percentage of people who open your email and click on a link in the email. The industry average for email marketing is 2.5%.
What It Tells You: While your open rate is important, you’ll want to see how often someone clicks on a link in your email. While the email gives them valuable information, you’ll ultimately want to move people from your emails to your website, social media, or other platforms so they convert into clients and customers. It can also show what people are interested in learning more about – whether a specific offer or package. You can calculate your click-through rate using the following formula:
(Number of links clicked in an email / Number of opened emails) x 100
Conversion Rate
What It Is: The ultimate goal is to get individuals to open your email and click on a link within the email to complete the desired action (such as completing a consultation form, buying a product, or hiring you to provide services). The conversion rate is the percentage of email recipients who do this!
What It Tells You: It can indicate whether your email copy aligns with the ultimate action you want to take. If people are opening your email and clicking on links but ultimately not converting, you’ll want to ensure the copy between the email and the action you want taken is aligned, the process to take the action is simple, and you’re targeting the correct/same audience. You can calculate your conversion rate using the following formula:
(Number of conversions / Number of email interactions) x 100
Your Website and SEO
If you’re not tracking your website via Google Analytics, you’re missing out on a wealth of knowledge! Google Analytics is our go-to platform for tracking campaigns, conversions, and user behavior.
If you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website, you can download our FREE Guide to Google Analytics! It takes less than 30 minutes to install and get up and running, and you’ll start receiving data within 24 hours.
Regarding tracking numbers in Google Analytics, we recommend playing around and getting familiar with all the information it provides because it can be overwhelming! You can also link your Google Analytics to your Google Search Console for more detailed information about your SEO efforts. These are the essentials you should track monthly:
New and Returning Users
What It Is: This is the breakdown of traffic between people who have visited your website before and those who are visiting it for the first time.
What It Tells You: Are your social media, email, and organic efforts (SEO!) paying off? Tracking your new and returning users indicates whether you’re acquiring new people OR retaining people who have already visited your website.
Session Source/Channel
What It Is: This breakdown tells you where your website traffic is coming from – organic search (your SEO efforts), direct (typing in your URL), social (anything from social media), and referral (newsletters and other people sharing your URL).
What It Tells You: If you’re marketing on different platforms (like organic and paid social media and email marketing), this will help you narrow down which drives the most and best traffic. While it’s great to know how many likes and comments your social media posting receives, you’ll want to measure what channel drives people to your website and which converts the most for sales so you can focus your efforts there!
Keyword Ranking/Position
What It Is: Keyword ranking tells where your website shows up on Google for specific keywords – the higher, the better. Ultimately, you’ll want to rank on the first page for your targeted keywords!
What It Tells You: This is a big indicator of how well your SEO efforts are doing! If you’re not ranking for targeted keywords after 6 months (SEO takes time!), it’s time to re-evaluate your SEO strategy.
Impressions
What It Is: An impression is how many times someone has seen a link to your site on Google.
What It Tells You: This is another indicator of your SEO strategy and whether it is working. Unless you know your website has seasonality, you want your impressions to increase continuously.
Clicks
What It Is: A click is how many times someone clicks on your website from Google.
What It Tells You: This isn't just an indicator of whether your SEO strategy is working but helps you determine whether you're targeting the right audience with your keywords. If your content gets many impressions but no clicks, there's a disconnect somewhere between the keywords you're targeting and what your audience wants.
Tracking KPIs with FlyDog Digital
If you're not tracking your digital marketing KPIs, you're missing out on insightful information to help you grow your account, better connect with your audience, and understand your ideal client!
At FlyDog Digital, all of our digital marketing efforts start with data and your current KPIs so we can create realistic benchmarks and goals going forward. Let's chat if you’re interested in social media management, email marketing, and SEO practices that rely on informed decisions rather than guesses and throwing spaghetti at the wall (because that happens A LOT!).
