20 Examples of Marketing Metrics and KPIs (With Definitions)

Evaluating a marketing campaign can help you identify promotional techniques that impact your target audiences. With marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), you can quantify the success of a campaign and plan how to achieve your goals for your next project. Applying measurements to your analysis can enable you to report accurate data and target areas you want to improve.

In this article, we define marketing metrics and KPIs and provide 20 examples.

What are marketing metrics and KPIs?

Marketing metrics and KPIs highlight a company's performance in marketing and advertising. They can help business leaders gauge the success of their campaigns and allocate funds to marketing strategies. Professionals may also use the metrics to compare current and past internal projects or conduct a competitive analysis. Companies may use KPIs unique to their businesses or standard in their industries.

Read more: What Is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI)? Examples, Best Practices and How To Create Them

20 marketing metrics and KPIs

To help you decide which KPIs are suitable, here are some examples of marketing metrics and KPIs:

1. Conversion rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of people who engage with your marketing materials in a specified way. It illustrates the campaign's ability to appeal to prospective consumers. For example, you might track the number of sales that resulted from email subscriptions. A high percentage can indicate that your promotional emails effectively persuade consumers to purchase products.

Read more: How To Calculate and Optimize Your Conversion Rate

2. Cost per lead

Cost per lead is a metric that measures how much money a company spends on acquiring the interest of potential new customers. A low cost per lead can show that consumers spend more money buying products than the company spent trying to obtain new customers. The low value can also show that the company is gaining profits.

3. Customer acquisition cost

Like cost per lead, customer acquisition cost measures the amount of money a business spends to engage new customers, but it only analyzes customers who make a purchase. Analyzing this metric can help you decide how much of your budget to dedicate to targeting prospects. You can determine if the acquisition costs are helping the company make more money.

Related: How To Use the Customer Acquisition Cost Formula in 4 Steps

4. Social media engagement

Social media engagement refers to the measurable outcomes that social media marketing campaigns generate. To gauge your consumer base's interest in a particular product, you may analyze user actions, such as likes, clicks and shares. For example, if your data shows that users clicked on the link to the company's website 100 times, you can conclude that the social media content inspires prospects to learn more about the brand you're promoting.

Related: How To Improve Social Media Engagement in 9 Steps

5. Customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) measures the possible revenue a customer can produce for a business over the entire time that customer is active with that company. Longer customer retention usually translates to higher customer lifetime value. Marketing can also have a direct impact on retention rates.

6. Return on investment

Return on investment (ROI) is a versatile KPI that measures how much money your company earns compared to how much it invests. Once you measure if the funds you devoted to a campaign benefited the company, you can decide how much money to allocate toward future projects. For instance, a high ROI can indicate that a brand spending a lot of money marketing is also receiving a lot of money in return.

7. Search engine rankings

Search engine optimization (SEO) rankings signify the online visibility of a company's website. When a consumer types a keyword in a search engine, they may click on the websites that rank first in the results. Knowing how to target keywords in your website content can help you improve your internet rankings and direct more consumers to the website.

Related: 11 Important KPIs To Track Your SEO Performance

8. Web traffic

Measuring the amount and source of web traffic to your company's site can be a helpful way to understand the composition of your site's visitors. This can be a valuable way to know if you are attracting more new visitors to your site and retaining repeat visitors. You can also determine what demographics you're appealing to gauge if your targeted marketing efforts are successful.

Related: What Is Web Traffic Monitoring? Plus Benefits, Tools and Steps

9. Event attendees

If you're holding in-person marketing events, such as a store opening or anniversary celebration, you can use the number of attendees as a measurable metric. This can help you compare one event to other similar events at your company or to events that other organizations have held. If your event attracted many consumers, you can decide if your efforts to promote the function were effective.

10. Marketing qualified leads

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead who's likely to purchase a good or service since they've already shown an interest in the company. For example, they may have consented to receive marketing emails or accessed the website several times. Identifying MQLs can allow you to figure out when and where to focus your promotional efforts.

11. Sales qualified leads

A sales qualified lead (SQL) is a lead that the sales team has confirmed productive. The leads, or potential customers, have shown through their actions that they intend to make purchases. Knowing who your SQLs are lets you know who your prospective buyers are.

Related: What Is A Sales Lead? (And How To Qualify One)

12. Mobile traffic

Mobile traffic is the number of website visitors using a mobile device for their web browsing purposes. Depending on your marketing strategy, you might try to increase or maximize the number of potential customers visiting your site on a smartphone or tablet. You might also use this metric to gauge your mobile site's effectiveness compared to the desktop version.

Related: How To Make a Mobile-Friendly Website (With Tips)

13. Brand awareness

Brand awareness is a metric that measures your company's success in social media and web advertising efforts. Factors such as brand mentions on social media and the number of consumers searching for the brand on the internet indicate brand awareness. You can also measure this concept by how much influencers engage with the company.

Related: How To Measure Brand Awareness (11 Strategies To Consider)

14. Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) measures how frequently search engine users use the links they find to navigate your site. This metric can be a useful measure of how appealing your consumer base finds your site as a search engine result. You can use the CTR to analyze the effectiveness of online ads.

Related: Calculating CTR: What Is it and How To Calculate It

15. Unique visitors

A unique visitor is a consumer who accessed the company's website at least once in a designated period. Measuring the number of unique users who visit your site can help you understand how many total individuals visit your site. You can compare this number to the number of repeat visitors' consumers. 

16. Referral traffic

Referral traffic is a metric that measures how many consumers visited your site from a referral from another website. This can effectively measure relationship-based marketing strategies, such as embedded links in sponsored content. For example, a consumer may click an active link to your website from another brand's site.

17. Email subscribers

If you send marketing materials via email, the number of subscribers on your list can tell you how many people wish to receive updates in their inbox and agree to receive these materials. Knowing how many people subscribe to your company emails can help you decide how much you use the email marketing strategy. You can also determine if the content of the emails appeals to your target audiences.

Related: 28 Easy and Effective Ways To Get More Email Subscribers

18. Customer retention

Customer retention refers to the number of existing customers a business keeps over a period. This metric can help compare new and returning customer numbers and design marketing strategies targeted to your existing customer base. High customer retention for a company can indicate that you have positive relationships with consumers.

Related: 17 Customer Retention Metrics (Plus How To Calculate Them)

19. Profit by product

Profit by product measures the percentage of the total profit each product generates. You can decide which product to emphasize in your marketing campaigns based on its impact on consumers' buying decisions. Using this metric can help you focus your marketing strategies on products you're confident can make money for the company.

Related: Product Profitability: Definition and Methods

20. Net promoter score

The net promoter score analyzes customers' likelihood to refer your products to their connections. It also refers to how loyal the customers are to the brand. This can be a good way to measure how awareness of your product spreads through external channels, such as social media and email.