Seven Marketing KPIs Worth Tracking

GlobalBrandsDigital, a community for brands expanding overseas

Marketing key performance indicators, or KPIs, let a team measure progress towards its strategic marketing objectives. Choosing the measures that fit the business is essential to making the marketing strategy useful.

Good marketing KPIs connect directly with business growth. Tracking every available number creates noise rather than insight. Understand a smaller set of measures, calculate them consistently and use them to guide a decision.

The source asks teams to track sales and new customers, score their leads, estimate how much a customer may spend over time, compare brand visibility, test awareness and calculate Net Promoter Score.

1. Sales metrics

Sales measures reflect business growth directly, which makes them an obvious KPI. The financial measure that matters most, however, depends on the business model and plan.

Ahrefs and other software-as-a-service businesses can use monthly recurring revenue or annual recurring revenue. Some venture-backed companies may pursue growth even when costs exceed revenue.

That approach does not fit every company. Most businesses need to consider revenue and cost together, which often makes profit more informative than revenue alone.

How to measure sales metrics

The company should know the exact figures through its accounting, customer relationship management, checkout or financial reporting systems.

Analytics tools may help attribute sales to marketing, but attribution is incomplete and biased by consent, devices and tracking limits. The source therefore cautions against treating an analytics estimate as the definitive financial KPI.

2. User and customer acquisition

A faster-growing user base does not automatically produce more profit, but its effects can extend beyond a single financial period.

The source uses Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, released as a free SEO toolset in September 2020, as an example. A free product can expand the user base, increase word of mouth and help more people become familiar with a company's paid products.

How to measure acquisition

Use registration and customer records in the CRM. The business needs a reliable sign-up or customer identifier before it can count acquisition consistently.

3. Lead quantity and quality

A subscription business may use leads as its main marketing KPI. Count how many arrive and assess whether they are likely to buy.

Lead volume and lead quality sit between marketing activity and growth in the customer base or sales. A high lead count is not enough if those contacts have little fit or intent.

How to measure lead quantity and quality

Lead volume can usually be counted in the CRM. Quality requires a defined scoring system that applies the same rules to each lead.

A score can consider how much the organization may be able to spend and what the person does on the website or in the product. It can also use the selected trial tier, setup choices, conversations with sales or support, and answers given at sign-up.

Some CRM platforms, including HubSpot, provide lead-scoring features. A built-in model still needs to be checked against the company's own sales process. An analytics specialist can help design and validate the scoring method.

4. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value estimates how much one customer will spend on a product or service over the relationship. Raising average customer value improves financial performance and can support a larger acquisition budget.

How to measure CLV

A basic formula is: average order value × average annual purchase frequency × average customer lifespan.

If average order value is $100, a customer buys four times a year and remains for three years on average, estimated CLV is $100 × 4 × 3 = $1,200.

A useful estimate requires enough sales history. With those inputs, the team can see whether it should raise order value, encourage more purchases or keep customers longer.

In its traditional advertising sense, share of voice compares a brand's advertising presence with competitors. The source extends the idea to organic search and social channels, where brands also compete for visibility.

The article describes a relationship between share of voice and market share. When share of voice exceeds market share, the difference is called excess share of voice. This is a planning concept rather than a guaranteed forecast of future market share.

Chart comparing share of voice with market share and showing an excess-share-of-voice growth zone

A single figure covering every marketing channel is difficult to produce. A practical alternative is to select a channel-level measure that reflects the same idea.

How to measure SOV

For organic search, use visibility across a defined keyword set. For paid search, use impression share. For organic social media, compare brand mentions with competitors. Television advertising can use gross rating points.

For organic search, the source suggests tracking the main keywords, adding competitor domains and comparing visibility in a rank-tracking report.

Ahrefs comparison table for visibility, average position, traffic and SERP features across three SEO software websites

Source: Ahrefs Rank Tracker. The visibility metric estimates the percentage of clicks from the tracked keywords that go to the selected websites.

6. Brand-awareness metrics

Brand awareness describes how familiar the target audience is with a brand. For example, more people may recall Tesla than Rivian when asked about electric vehicles because Tesla has greater awareness among those consumers.

The source separates two questions. Salience asks whether the brand comes to mind within the category and what proportion of the market knows it. Positioning asks whether people associate the brand with the intended ideas.

How to measure brand awareness

Representative market research is required. A research provider can recruit a suitable sample and collect answers that are more defensible than social engagement or website traffic alone.

7. Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is based on how likely customers say they are to recommend a product or service. It is used as an indicator of satisfaction and loyalty.

Revolut survey asking how likely a customer is to recommend the service on a zero-to-ten scale

The selected score groups respondents as detractors, passives or promoters.

NPS scale grouping zero-to-ten responses into detractors, passives and promoters

NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. The result can range from -100 to 100; a score above zero means promoters outnumber detractors.

The source notes that a score above 70 is often described as outstanding. An acceptable benchmark can be lower in industries such as telecommunications. Industry and survey context must accompany the number.

NPS is easy to calculate, but it should not be interpreted without learning why respondents chose their scores.

How to measure NPS

A survey can be delivered in person, online, by email or through an in-product or browser prompt.

Software can calculate the score automatically. Add a follow-up question so respondents can explain the reason for the rating and provide the qualitative context the score lacks.

Final thoughts

The source deliberately leaves return on investment and customer acquisition cost out of the main seven. They are useful, but using them without care can bias the team towards short-term decisions.

ROI and CAC can work as channel KPIs for direct-response advertising. They are less suitable for evaluating the full long-term effect of display advertising or brand channels such as television and billboards.

Do not measure a number simply because it is available. Each KPI should support a defined strategic marketing objective.

Seven Marketing KPIs Worth Tracking