Campaign KPIs – what are they and how to set them?

KPIs – why are KPIs important?

Campaign KPIs are extremely important because they allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing efforts. They allow you to assess whether a campaign is meeting its intended goals and whether it is profitable. KPIs allow you to objectively assess the performance of your campaign, enabling you to make informed decisions and adjust your marketing strategy over the course of the campaign.

Also, KPIs enable better management of campaign resources and budgets. They allow you to control spending, monitor the effectiveness of activities and adjust resource allocation depending on the campaign’s performance. As a result, the company can optimize its marketing activities, achieving better results at a lower cost.

Key performance indicators

Your goal should be: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. So “increase sales” is a poorly set goal – you will achieve it even if you increase sales by 1%, but will such a result be satisfactory to you? For that, “increase sales by 10% during Q1 2023” already sounds reasonable.

Example, properly set goals:

• increase the number of page likes by 50 per week
• getting 25 new contacts to the newsletter in a month
• acquiring 100 new customers in Q1 2023

When you clearly define goals, it’s easy to evaluate your marketing progress, as well as the effectiveness of each channel in achieving those goals. Setting goals will also bring you closer to estimating the budget you will need to achieve them 

Your KPIs may include: increasing website traffic, increasing conversions, increasing average transaction value, increasing the number of newsletter subscribers, or increasing market share. It is important that your KPIs are consistent with your campaign goals and can be measured objectively.

There is no need to be too specific.

Data indicators that can serve as KPIs

The indicators you can pay attention to are many, while I will highlight a few of the most important ones that usually determine the effectiveness of the activities you conduct. I will present them in the order in which the user interacts with your ads.

Displays – as the name suggests, this is a ratio that determines how many times your ad is displayed to users. Take care of display rates if your marketing goal is to build awareness of your brand.

Results

Clicks – a click is counted when potential customers click an ad. The number of clicks helps determine how attractive an ad is to the users viewing it. Well-tailored ads are more likely to get clicks.

Click through rate (CTR) – CTR is the percentage of people who came to a page using an ad displayed to them. The value of a good CTR will vary depending on the product or service being advertised, as well as the network on which your ads will be displayed. To increase CTR, focus on creating compelling ad text that is closely related to your keywords. Tip – we often focus on increasing CTR without considering the quality of traffic that comes to our site through ads. A high CTR indicates that the ad is inviting and users are eager to click on it, but this does not necessarily mean that they will find what they are actually looking for on the site. Ensure that your ads clearly communicate what the user will get when they click on them. This will allow you to attract users who are actually interested in your products or services.

Conversions – a conversion is counted when a user interacts with your ad and performs an action you specify. Conversions can range from purchases and registrations to phone calls to your business. When setting up conversion tracking, you specify what is counted as a conversion. To see the number of different conversions achieved, you can segment the data table by the action causing the conversion. Conversion rates are also important KPIs in this case.

Average cost per click (CPC average) – the average cost per click of an ad. It is the cost of an ad divided by the total number of clicks. This is one of the most important ratios you should pay attention to when optimizing your campaign. Depending on the strategy you choose, you can focus on lowering the cost of clicks as much as possible, thus getting more users in the same amount, or you can focus on getting more expensive clicks, which at the same time are of higher quality and more likely to lead to conversions. The average cost per click can vary dramatically, depending on your industry, keywords, the geolocation in which you display ads, or even demographics. That’s why it’s important to optimize your cost per click from different angles, such as ad groups, for campaigns, product types, landing pages. If you want to know ways to optimize your marketing campaigns, you can find them in our article titled Search campaigns – how to optimize them?

KPIs – good practices

Define metrics and measures: Once the KPIs have been selected, specific metrics and metrics that will measure the achievement of those KPIs should be defined. For example, if the campaign’s KPI is an increase in website traffic, the metrics could be number of sessions, time spent on the site, churn rate, etc. It is important that the metrics are consistent with the KPIs and can be measured accurately.

Determine success thresholds: Next, it’s a good idea to define thresholds for KPIs, that is, specific values that will signify the success of the campaign. These can be specific numbers, percentages or metrics, for example. Success thresholds allow you to assess whether the campaign is meeting its goals.

Monitoring and analysis of results: Once KPIs, metrics and success thresholds have been established, it is necessary to monitor campaign performance in real time. This allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign in real time and adjust your strategy if necessary. Analyzing results also allows you to make inferences from campaign activities and make decisions based on facts and data.

KPIs in social media

KPIs are also important in the context of social media marketing activities. With the right KPIs in place, you can measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns and assess whether the results achieved are in line with your goals. Here are some sample KPIs related to social media:

Reach – Reach refers to the number of people who have seen content posted by a brand on social media. This can include the number of impressions, page views, organic reach (i.e., free) or paid reach (i.e., paid to promote posts) on various social media platforms. Reach is an important indicator for assessing a brand’s popularity and the effectiveness of its social media efforts.

Accountability – Engagement refers to users’ interactions with a brand’s content on social media, such as likes, shares, comments, clicks, etc. Higher engagement usually indicates greater interest in a brand’s content and greater community involvement in interacting with it.

Number of observers/fans – The number of observers or fans on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn can also be an important KPI. An increase in the number of observers can indicate a brand’s growing reach and popularity, as well as greater potential for reaching out with content in the future.

KPI – summary

Adjust campaign strategy: If your campaign results do not meet your KPIs and success thresholds, you may need to adjust your campaign strategy. Based on monitoring and analysis of results, weaknesses in the campaign can be identified and actions can be taken to improve them. This may include changes in marketing communications, optimization of marketing channels, changes in offerings or adjustments to budgets

To access the data you need to effectively evaluate your efforts, you can use GA4. In our article we share useful tips: Google Analytics 4 – tips to make your daily work easier

If you want to professionally determine the KPIs of your marketing campaigns and choose the right promotional channels, you can use the services of Digital Agency The agency is primarily engaged in the planning and implementation of online marketing activities, which may consist of brand building, search engine advertising, public relations, creating marketing communications, optimizing online campaigns or data analytics. The agency’s marketing department will assess budget allocation, recommend solutions in ppc advertising and make any changes to the website.

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