How to define KPIs in Digital Marketing?

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Why KPIs are important in Digital Marketing
One of the great opportunities in digital strategies is the vast amount of data we have available to analyze their performance. At the same time, this vast amount of information can sometimes be counterproductive, as we can end up feeling overwhelmed and unable to discern between what is useful and what is not.

Knowing how to detect those metrics that are relevant to our business is important in order to establish useful KPIs that give us relevant information about how our business is developing and whether the objectives of the digital strategy are being met.

How to choose KPIs for Digital Marketing?
When defining the KPIs and objectives of the digital strategy, we must keep in mind that they must be SMART:

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Achievable

R – Relevant

T – Timely

Keeping this acronym in mind, what are the next steps?

Choosing a representative name for our KPI
Define a metric or group of metrics
Define the evaluation of this metric: mathematical symbol <,<=,>=,>,=(less than, greater than, less than or equal to, etc.)
Define the objective
Let us illustrate these points with two examples:
Example 1 : Let's imagine that we have an e-commerce and we want to international email database increase our website sales by 25% compared to the previous year's sales.

KPI Name: Sales Increase
Evaluation: >= (greater than or equal to)
Metric/s: current year sales
Target: 25% (vs. previous year's sales)
Therefore, the KPI will be: increase in sales for the current year by at least 25% compared to the previous year.

Example 2: In this case we are a restaurant and we want to increase our engagement on Instagram by 15% compared to the previous year.

Generate business!
KPI Name : Instagram Engagement
Metric/s: interactions
Evaluation: >= (greater than or equal to)
Target: 15%
In this case the KPI will be: increase in interactions on Instagram by 15% compared to the interactions of the previous year.

A good way to set our goals is to take into account our history; we can define it based on experience and scenarios (pessimistic, moderate or optimistic) .

If your business is new and you don't have any references, you can look at some of your competitors.

Digital strategy objectives: What to consider when choosing our KPIs?
Strategic business objectives > CSF (Key Success Factors) > KPIs

When setting our digital KPIs, we must keep in mind that they must always be in line with the strategic objectives of the business .

Based on these strategic objectives, we will define the CSF ( Critical Success Factor ) that respond to how we are going to achieve the stated objectives.

Therefore, the KPIs we define will indicate whether we are achieving the key success factors that will allow us to achieve the objectives of the digital strategy.

Let's take another example:
This time our business is a new e-commerce that sells premium dog food.

Our strategic objective is: To make our brand known to owners who want a premium food for their dogs.
As CSF (Key Success Factors) we can have, among others: Increase Brand Awareness
For each CSF there must be at least one associated KPI . In this case, one of them could be: Increase in our followers on Instagram by 30% compared to the previous year.
Obviously, to achieve our strategic objective, there will be more indicators to consider. This example serves to highlight that KPIs must be in line with the objectives of the digital strategy and that we must carefully select which metrics to take into account.

If we do not do the previous exercise we run the risk of creating KPIs with metrics that are not relevant to the strategic objectives we have set.

What are the main KPIs in Digital Marketing?
The answer to this question is it depends . Depending on the business objectives, we will have to focus on certain metrics or others. For example, if our strategy is based on SEO, we will look at SEO KPIs and, depending on what we want, we will focus on those that help us achieve our objectives.

If you need help defining and meeting the objectives of your digital strategy and its KPIs, don't hesitate to contact us!