Unlock Profitability: Top 17 Marketing Metrics You Need To Know

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December 17, 2023

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If you want to make sure your business is as profitable as possible, you need to know what you are looking at and why it matters. Marketing metrics are the key to unlocking your marketing efforts and seeing what is moving the needle forward. Your marketing team should constantly be evaluating the many numbers that prove your profit.

Which marketing metrics should you be paying attention to when launching a new campaign?

We'll dive into the ones that make the most difference for your marketing campaigns right away.

What are Marketing Metrics and KPIs?

Marketing metrics are simply a tool that you can use to determine how efficient your campaigns are and where you have more room for growth. Key performance indicators (KPIs) can track performance over a period of time, letting you know what resonated with your audience.

The specific metrics you track will vary depending on your goals and campaigns, but there are dozens of possibilities that could indicate success or failure.

It's important not just for the here and now but also for the future. With a record of what has worked for you in the past, you have a greater chance of landing on marketing efforts that will work for you in the months and years ahead.

Why Marketing Teams Should Tune into Marketing Metrics

How much does it cost to bring a customer in, and are they converting to sales? These are just some of the questions that your marketing teams will want to answer. The truth is that an incredible 89 percent of leading marketers utilize these key marketing metrics to make decisions about their efforts.

In other words, you need to know what is working before you can decide what to do or where to go at any given point.

More than that, you can see where your marketing dollars are more effectively spent. You will pinpoint which channels yielded the greatest results for you, how much you should spend on new marketing campaigns, and areas where you can let your efforts fade away.

Whether you have an entire marketing team or work solo, you can determine your return on investment (ROI) with some of the following metrics.

Key Marketing Metrics You Need to Track Performance

It's easy to get overwhelmed by all of the possible things you can track and measure when it comes to your marketing efforts. Here are the top things you want to monitor to calculate marketing performance in your business.

1. Cost per Lead (CPL)

How much do you spend to bring a new lead into your sales funnel? Closing more sales is important, but you won't be able to close a deal if you have no one to market to. Your cost per lead (CPL) is vital when you launch a new campaign.

It can help you track how many people you bring in over a given period and can lead you to other marketing metrics like conversion rate.

CPL is calculated by dividing your total marketing cost by the number of leads brought in during the window you spent money.

2. Leads Generated and Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is an important metric to measure because it determines how many leads you will need to bring in to reach your sales goals. You already took the time to figure out how many leads you got or generated in a specific period. Now, you need to see how many of those convert to paying customers.

Take the number of leads that turn into paying customers and divide by the total number of leads. Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Good conversion metrics usually range from 2 to 5 percent, according to Mail Chimp.

3. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

For every customer that you bring through the door, you need to know how much you are likely to earn. This figure is known as the customer lifetime value (CLV). It tracks how much any particular customer is likely to spend with your brand and how long they will be a part of your sales funnel.

CLV also takes into account whether they are likely to be return customers based on historical data.

There's no fancy math required for this step. You can use the Hubspot calculator to determine your customer lifetime value.

4. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

This is a slightly different marketing metric that your sales team should keep in mind when measuring marketing performance. Customer acquisition cost takes the total amount of money spent on a given campaign and sees how much it costs to convert just one customer.

Add up your marketing spend and see how many customers converted during your campaign. Divide the sum by the number of customers and see how much you spent per customer. You want this figure to be as low as possible, but the average varies depending on the industry.

5. Return on Investment (ROI)

How much have you earned compared to how much you have spent? Comparing these two numbers to each other helps you measure your return on investment, more commonly referred to simply as ROI. Your ROI is measured by comparing what you gained compared to what you spent.

To measure, subtract your marketing costs from your total revenue generated and then divide by your marketing costs. Positive numbers indicate a good ROI, while negative numbers show that you spent more than you made.

6. Click-through Rate

Click-through rate is a great digital marketing metric that you should be measuring. It helps you identify how many times a customer clicks through your ad, email marketing, or general link compared to the total number of people who see that link. Compare your click-through rate to the industry standard for your niche.

If you have a high click-through rate, you must be doing something right with your marketing efforts!

7. Bounce Rate

Do people click on your website and then promptly leave? That's what your bounce rate tells you. Your sales team should know how many people are visiting your website just to bounce back to the search engine results page to try again. This means that your copy may not be doing its job, or your site might not be optimized.

If you have Google Analytics for your blog or website, you can track this right from your dashboard.

Maybe it feels like you are screaming into the void when you post on social media. Engagement metrics are one of the best ways to pinpoint whether your digital marketing efforts are having the desired effect on your customers. A few things you can track include likes, comments, and shares.

The number of followers you have may not be the best indicator of marketing performance if people are not actually engaging with you.

Instead, you can use this engagement rate calculator from Hootsuite to see if you come in around the average of 1 to 5 percent.

9. Net Promoter Score

Want to know if you can count on your existing customers to refer their friends to your business? The right marketing metrics can tell you, and the Net Promoter Score does just that. At the end of a transaction with your customer, ask them a simple question: how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?

An answer ranking between 9 and 10 is a promoter, while a number 0 through 6 is a detractor. Anyone in the middle is passive. Subtract your number of detractors from your promoters, and you have your NPS. Positive numbers (usually above 20) are the best.

10. Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads (MQL to SQL)

Another metric you can use is the transition from a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead (MQL to SQL). A marketing-qualified lead is a person who is near the bottom of the sales funnel and is getting ready to make a purchase. Sales-qualified leads are those who should be followed up with and may have already been warmed up by your sales team.

The percentage of MQL to SQL indicates how effectively your marketing team is managing your clients. Divide SQLs by MQLs and aim for the highest number you can.

11. Customer Retention

Are your existing customers likely to come back to you? This marketing metric measures how successful you are at creating loyal customers. If they're satisfied with your service or product and give you a high Net Promoter Score, you will likely have increased customer retention as well.

You'll need the following formula to calculate your customer retention:

(Existing customers at start time – customers at end of time)/New customers * 100

12. Email Subscribers and Open Rates

Email marketing metrics are just as important as tracking sales and website visitors. You should know how many people sign up for your email newsletter to determine if your prompts are converting and if your lead magnet is appealing enough. If your list has stalled out, it may be time to refresh what you have on offer.

Open rates are one of the most important marketing metrics because they tell you that people want to see what you have to say. This also lets you know what sorts of message titles are effective and helps you pinpoint ways to improve in future campaigns.

You can also track the click-through rate for the links contained within your emails.

See our full guide on email marketing here.

13. Unique Website Traffic

How many people are coming to your website? Sometimes, you might find that the same person and the same IP address visit your page multiple times. There's nothing wrong with this, and might even mean something positive for your marketing as each visit pushes them along your sales funnel.

However, unique visitors are just as important. This counts the total number of people who land on your website during a specified window of time. Google Analytics can do the heavy lifting for you and tell you how many unique visitors you've had.

14. Time Spent on Page

When someone does come to your site, how long do they spend there? Maybe they click around and visit multiple pages, spending five to ten minutes on your site. You should aim to have the time spent on the page as long as possible. The more someone engages with your brand, the more likely they are to convert to a sale later on.

Google Analytics will reveal this information to you. As you might have seen by now, it benefits you to enable Google Analytics to keep your finger on the right marketing metrics at all times!

15. Organic Traffic

Do people find your website without your digital marketing? This means that people are finding you based solely on the SERPs for your keywords, geographic location, or any other source apart from a more direct digital marketing performance.

All you have to do is head over to the Acquisitions tab on Google Analytics, and you'll find this marketing metric.

Here are some ways you can increase organic traffic.

16. Core Web Vitals

Your Core Web Vitals influence your ranking on the SERPs, so it's a good marketing metric to keep top of mind. It measures your loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. You can track your Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console to measure your overall performance.

For more information on what else Google Search Console can do, see our guide here.

17. Keyword Ranking

What position do you show up when someone searches for the key terms that relate to your business? These performance marketing metrics are crucial to make sure that your website is improving and is likely to come up as a valid solution to a client's queries. The higher you are on the SERPs, the more likely you are to get organic traffic.

Tools like SEMRush are perfect for keeping track of these marketing metrics and KPIs, among other things. See our full SEMRush review here.

Final Thoughts: Marketing Metrics to Keep You Moving in the Right Direction

No matter what marketing channels you are taking advantage of, you should know how your digital marketing is performing. Your target audience will know you, move further along your marketing funnel, and convert to more real-time sales if you keep your finger on the pulse of your marketing metrics.

It allows you to adjust your strategy and pivot when you need to, which can seriously improve your marketing efforts. Consider how you can start to measure just some of these metrics and KPIs today!

Digital Marketing

By Ashley Simpson

Ashley is an experienced freelance writer with an enthusiasm for finding creative ways to earn money online. She uses her passion for words to share what she has learned with the world.

She spends most of her time blogging for a multitude of websites and consuming everything she can get her hands on in relation to personal finance and side hustles.

Want to learn step-by-step how I built my Niche Site Empire up to a full-time income?

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Unlock Profitability: Top 17 Marketing Metrics You Need To Know

What are Marketing Metrics and KPIs?

Why Marketing Teams Should Tune into Marketing Metrics