6 Key Performance Indicators to Track for Marketing

An overview of the key performance indicators to track in marketing, a step-by-step guide on how to set marketing KPIs

January 3, 2023
Press the button to generate random icebreaker questions.
There are 300 more icebreaker questions at the bottom of the article
How would you describe your job to a five year old?
What season would you be?
What is a weird food you have tried? Would you eat it again?
What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Would you go in the mother-ship with aliens if they landed on Earth tomorrow?
What is your favorite season?
Do prefer working from home or the office?
What is your earliest memory of this job?
What is the best thing you have bought so far this year?
What is the earliest book you remember?
If you had to move to another country, which one would you choose?
You are the best criminal mastermind in the world. What crime would you commit if you knew you would get away with it?
What is your favorite movie genre to watch?
What was the last thing you ate?
What person from history would you add to Mount Rushmore?
What is a weird fact you know?
What is your favorite part of working from home?
Were the Spice Girls a good team?
Imagine you can instantly learn any language. Which would you choose?
If you could live in any state, which state would you pick?
Which fictional team is the best team of all time?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
What do you usually eat for a quick lunch?
What simple food will you never eat?
Show us the weirdest thing you have in the room with you right now.
Would you rather stay at a hotel or an AirBNB?
What is your favorite movie genre to watch?
Are you more productive in the morning or at night?
Who is someone in your community that makes a difference?
Who was your most unique pet?
Choose one famous person from history you want on your team during a zombie apocalypse.
What is a good way to give back to the community?
Which song could you listen to over and over again?
Is Hugh Grant funny?
What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?
Would you want to have an imaginary friend today? Did you have one as a child?
What actor or actress would you want to play you in the movie about your life?
What is the best super power?
What is your New Years resolution?
You can only eat one food again for the rest of your life. What is it?
What is the best work holiday?
What is the first gift you remember receiving?
Would you rather join Metallica or Backstreet Boys?
What is the best example of a community you have seen?
What is an easy way to do something nice for someone?
Show us your phone background and tell the story behind why you picked this image.
What was your first job?
Pick any band to play at your funeral.
If you could have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what would you pick?
Which superpower would you give to your arch enemy?
What is the most obscure superpower you would want?
What emoji best describes how you are feeling right now?
If you could live in any country, which country would you pick?
Would you rather live in a city or a town?
What is your favorite holiday?
What is something you accomplished as part of a team?
What is your standard office lunch?
What is your most used phone app?
What is your favorite season?
Have you ever won something as a team?
Imagine you are a professional baseball player. What is your introduction song?
Beach holiday or ski trip?
Have you ever been to a funny comedy show?
Would you rather live at the North Pole or the South Pole?
What is your favorite song to sing?
If you could live in any state, which state would you pick?
Imagine you could teleport anywhere. Where would you go right now?
What is the most unusual job you have heard of?
What was the last thing you ate?
You can visit any fictional time or place. Which would you pick?
What do your family and friends think you do all day?
What movie do you wish you could watch again for the first time?
Show us your most-used emoji.
What was the most unique style or fashion trend you ever embraced?
What movie defined your generation?
You are stranded on a remote desert island. Are you alone or with your worst enemy?
What is your favorite knock-knock joke?
Have you ever told someone Santa is not real?
Do you know how to speak more than one language?
On a scale of 1 – 10, how much of a team player are you?
What is your #1 recommendation in this city?
What is your favorite holiday?
What bucket list item do you most want to check off in the next six months?
What is your favorite mythical creature?
What was the first way you made money?
If you could be great at any Olympic sport, which would it be?
Which song could you listen to over and over again?
When did you start liking/hating mushrooms?
Where is your favorite vacation spot?
Do you take your PTO all at one time, or another way?
Which show do you remember most from your childhood?
Which beverage goes best with pizza?
Would you want to have a personal assistant follow you around everywhere and do what you asked of them?
Have you ever met your idol?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Would you rather live 100 years in the past or 100 years in the future?
What is your hobby?
When you are alone in the car, what volume is the music at?
Imagine you no longer have to work. How would you spend a Tuesday?
What is your favorite type of sandwich?

Acquiring new customers is tough. Getting them in the door takes time, effort, and money. But keeping customers for the long term is even harder.

To achieve this, it's essential to keep tabs on your marketing efforts and measure progress - learning how marketing is performing and what to track.

And that's where your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) come in.

Key performance indicators are quantifiable metrics used primarily for performance measurement. They enable a company to assess its performance in relation to its predetermined goals over time.

These indicators vary from company to company and, more importantly, from industry to industry. These variations are a result of differences in objectives. 

In addition, a company can have several critical strategic, financial, operational, and marketing objectives. Hence it's good practice to use appropriate KPIs to track specific key objectives.

In this article, we'll focus on the best KPIs to track in marketing, metrics that help you monitor and evaluate marketing strategies, and how to set your KPIs. 

Let's dive right into it!

What Are The 6 Key Performance Indicators?

KPIs essentially indicate the pace at which a company can fulfill its key objectives. It serves as a gauge to measure individual or team performances, the outputs of activities, and the overall company's performance.

The six key performance indicators marketers should track include:

  1. Profit Margin

Often called the net profit margin (NPM), this KPI assesses the company's performance in terms of revenue and profits within a specified timeframe.

The profit margin is exclusive of taxes, interest payments, and expenses. And becomes negative when production costs outweigh revenue generation. The goal is to generate more than you spend.

A low-profit margin within a particular period indicates ineffective marketing initiatives during this period. 

The net profit margin can be calculated using this formula: Net profit margin = ( Net profit / Total revenue) × 100.

  1. Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

This shows the number of customers a company can maintain using inputs from customer spending, loyalty, customer satisfaction, sales, and marketing costs.

Customer retention is a very important KPI to track because profitability is largely influenced by customer retention rate. And one of the ways to boost your company’s retention rate is through effective marketing.

Retention rate tells you how impactful your brand is; customers remain loyal as long as your products meet their needs. You can calculate the customer retention rate using this formula: Customer retention rate = (( E-N) / S) × 100).

E represents the number of customers at the end of the period.

N represents the number of new customers within the period.

S represents the number of customers at the beginning of the period.

  1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

This marketing KPI provides information about the total cost of acquiring a new customer. It is usually measured against a specified period.

Knowing the costs of acquiring a customer enables you to make better budgetary allocations for future marketing campaigns. It's also good practice to break down your marketing strategy into components to know the effectiveness of each. 

Putting more effort into components that boost conversion rates improves customer acquisition costs in the long run. You can calculate customer acquisition cost using the formula: Customer acquisition cost = (Total marketing expenses + Total sales expenses) / Number of new customers acquired.

  1. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

This refers to the potential revenue the company stands to accrue over the lifespan of a customer.

Keeping track of how much financial value can be obtained from existing customers helps you ascertain if your brand is making much impact. When a significant number of your customer base have positive CLVs, a large fraction of the marketing budget can be channeled towards bringing in new customers.  

Customer lifetime value can be calculated as follows: (Average sale per customer) × (Average number of times a customer buys per year) × (Average lifetime of a customer).

  1. Digital marketing Return on Investment (ROI)

Every company wants to see a return on its investment, even for its marketing efforts.

It's crucial to assess how well your marketing campaigns are doing and if they're bringing in revenue to the company directly or indirectly. To avoid increasing the marketing budget for ineffective activities and not putting enough money into the effective ones.

There are different calculation techniques. However, a simplified version by Impact Plus shows that you can calculate your marketing ROI using this formula: Digital marketing ROI = (sales growth - marketing investment) / marketing investment.

ROI enables you to determine the total revenue generated by a marketing campaign in contrast to the operating costs of the campaign. It's a high-yield indicator that explicitly states whether a marketing campaign is worthwhile. 

  1. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

Lead generation is simply the process of gathering information about prospects for a future sales outreach. A marketing qualified lead, however, is a lead that the sales team can reach out to. 

When you identify a qualified lead according to the standards of your organization, it's easier to track the effective steps and activities in the marketing pipeline. It could be through sign-up forms, website traffic and behavior, social media engagement, etc.

Automating the tracking process using Assembly is the best way to go about it. Book a demo to try it today.

How Do You Set KPIs For Marketing?

It's not enough to have KPIs; the most important thing is to monitor them actively. Setting KPIs for marketing involves:

Developing A Marketing Strategy

Avoid using arbitrary KPIs. The KPI created should be based on a well-defined marketing strategy to guarantee focus and add meaning to the KPIs.

The strategy adopted is based on your key objectives and the best possible path to achieve them. In addition, the marketing strategy depends on your budget, customers, available resources, and competitors.

Selecting The Right KPIs

What follows is that you choose KPIs that match your marketing strategy's goals.

If your goal is to increase your yearly revenue, a good KPI example will be to increase monthly recurring revenue by 5%.

Modifying Your KPIs With Previous Data

You need to find and tune your KPIs using historical data to serve their purpose best. This also helps you come up with the best strategy.

Just a look at previous data might show that the best way to increase yearly revenue is to increase monthly recurring revenue by 10%.

What's The Primary KPI To Measure Marketing Success?

While there are various KPIs, the primary KPI to measure marketing success is the Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).

It's a very vital KPI to track in marketing for two major reasons:

First, it provides information about the number of leads brought in within a given period.

Secondly, it is a good measure of conversion rate. Typically, leads graduate to prospects and finally become your customers; marketing qualified leads to help you monitor this progression.

Relationships with potential customers begin from the moment they engage with you. It could be by filling out an online form or signing up for a service till they eventually purchase your products. 

Tracking conversion rate helps the marketing team know how successful it is in securing leads.

What Is A Marketing KPI Dashboard?

A marketing KPI dashboard visually represents a company's key marketing KPIs.

It's an analytical tool that enables you to monitor and evaluate marketing performance. A marketing dashboard guides and dictates an organization’s marketing strategies. It helps you estimate the performance efficiency of different aspects of the business to ensure they are running smoothly.

It shows you how your organization is faring against critical KPIs. A dashboard helps you deliver on your brand promise. In addition, you can observe your prospects' real-time response to your marketing efforts, making refining your strategies easier.

A dashboard provides a breakdown of your marketing efforts and helps maintain customer relationships.

Introducing The Right Key Performance Indicators

The primary aim of every marketing effort is to gain new customers and boost profit margin. 

But this means there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to measuring marketing performance. The best results can be achieved by combining different KPIs and analytics. 

So, by establishing clear KPI benchmarks, you can start to define your target market, measure your marketing channels' performance and better understand your audience.

It's all about closing the loop – learning from past mistakes, getting customer feedback, and using this information for future planning. And monitoring these key performance indicators in marketing will help you get there.

Finally, tracking tools like Assembly help to introduce transparency and validity to your marketing process. Try it here for free!!

Browse our Free Employee Recognition Guide

Get the foundational knowledge on creating an employee recognition program that boosts employee engagement and helps them feel valued.

Explore Guide
Employee recognition guide