How to Track KPIs like a Marketing Agency

Tips and tricks from a virtual marketing agency

Time to double down on your digital marketing efforts with a little bit of help from Social Link. Armed with our expert advice on KPIs, you’ll learn how to track KPIs like a digital marketing agency in no time.

First things first: let’s break it down to the basics. 

What are KPIs?

If you’re scratching your head and trying to remember what KPI even stands for, that’s totally fine. You’re in the right place. We’ve got you.

A KPI is a key performance indicator. In the simplest terms, KPIs help organizations determine whether or not they’re meeting their strategic goals. They are the crucial indicators of progress toward a goal or desired result. Key performance indicators provide a focus for business opportunities, both strategically and operationally. They create an analytical basis for making decisions, and they can help companies zone in on what matters the most. 

Good KPIs help educate and inform people about what’s working and what’s not as their business changes over time. This information often leads to having the ability to make better decisions and devise stronger strategies. 

What do KPIs measure?

KPIs measure anything from financial performance and customer satisfaction to operational processes and internal strategies. They help you determine what is impacting your bottom line.

A decent KPI can track efficiency, effectiveness, quality, time management, compliance, project performance, allocation of resources, and more. 

KPIs are so important because of how effective they are. As SalesChoice CEO Dr. Cindy Gordon puts it, “Analytics is the most effective factor in modern-day sales.”

Goal Setting

In order to properly track your KPIs, you must first define your goals. Make several clear, concise goals to start off. Don’t make too many goals if you think you’ll get bogged down or overwhelmed. There’s no need to go overboard just yet! Simply set a few goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. 

Once you have your list of goals, you should make yourself aware of the two categories of KPIs.

Leading and Lagging Indicators

KPIs fall into two categories: leading or lagging indicators.

Easy to change but difficult to measure, leading indicators drive your bottom line. They focus on the specific actions that lead to your results. Leading indicators beget lagging indicators. 

Lagging indicators are your results or output. Examples include the number of new clients you got this week or the revenue your company made last month.

Setting the KPIs

In order to create your KPIs, ask, “How can I measure each goal? How do I make sure that I’m achieving that goal?” 

HubSpot explains, “Results ultimately stem from the right activities. So working backward from the end goal like revenue to the front end of the sales process will actually help the salesperson understand the necessary activity to achieve their goal.”

Hubspot offers a few good examples of potential KPIs. They explain that a B2B software-as-a-service company might be focused on cost per acquisition and churn, while a digital media or publishing company will likely focus on unique visitors and the number of time users spent on the site. Meanwhile, a retail store might concentrate on sales per square foot or customer satisfaction. A professional service may want to track bookings and effective billable rates.

Tracking Tips

In order to track KPIs like a digital marketing agency, you need to utilize the proper tools and methods. You can use either something simple like Excel to build a summary report from your metrics or we recommend taking advantage of KPI monitoring or data visualization software.

These tools can help you create a KPI dashboard where you keep track of your lead conversions, returning visitors, brand awareness, purchase funnels, etc. This data should be pulled from various sources like Google Analytics, Facebook, Quickbooks, and more. Building a KPI report and dashboard helps you effectively and efficiently monitor business metrics in real-time. Reports and dashboards are crucial tools because they allow you to get an unbiased, concrete view of your company’s performance in one place. 

There are many software and program options out there that give you access to a dashboard and help you track KPIs. We highly recommend using HubSpot, which allows you to monitor performance metrics in a user-friendly way.

Consistency is imperative.

Be consistent. Tracking your KPIs consistently is one of the first ways you can upgrade your marketing strategy. It’s all about consistency when measuring your KPIs. Whether it occurs weekly or monthly doesn’t matter as much as the action of the routine measuring.

Adjust if you have to.

 “Adjusting KPIs to drive behavior that you need to drive results to your business is extremely important,” said Justin Hiatt, the vice president of digital sales at Workfront.

Tracking KPI performance is easy with Social Link.

Make smart decisions faster with dashboard analytics that monitors your site’s success. Interested in outsourcing your KPI tracking? Social Link uses HubSpot’s conversion and tracking tools to analyze campaign performance from Google Ads, social ads, search, and referrals.

By using HubSpot conversions and tracking tools, we can determine your content strategy’s return on investment. We will expertly determine the proper metrics to track your organic and paid efforts and hone in on how to best communicate your content’s performance.

Reporting 101.

We compile detailed HubSpot reports on the various metrics that contribute to your revenue. This information puts everything into perspective with concrete numbers and specific percentages that help you see the bottom line. The reports and subsequent reflection allows you to take a step back and look closer at areas where you’re doing well and also nail down potential opportunities for your business to improve.   

Who we are.

Social Link is a virtual marketing agency that expertly and efficiently streamlines digital marketing efforts. We set up full-funnel sales and marketing tools that attract, nurture, convert, and delight your customers. Our proven, practiced solutions and methods come highly recommended. 

We define the outcomes, the offerings, the customer, and the message through strategic planning and management. You’ll get a seamless campaign experience with unified messages for your customers.