Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. They differ depending on the type of business, but, for any business, they are the actionable scorecard that keeps their strategy on track as this video from Erica Olsen of OnStrategy shows
KPIs are metrics tied to a target. For B2B marketers, KPIs should be the five or six most important metrics that measure the success of their strategy to increase and accelerate commerce transactions between businesses.
More often, these days, that strategy involves digital marketing and tactics like website optimization, search engine marketing, content marketing, email marketing, webinars, videos, ebooks, podcasts, social media and social selling.
What KPIs should B2B Marketers consider to keep their strategy on track? Here are 17 essential KPIs for B2B marketers,
- SALES REVENUE: A KPI scorecard start with the primary measurement that determines success. Sales revenue is often considered #1. It may be obvious but it also shows offline and critical business requirements are integral to any KPI scorecard.
- PROFITS: But not all B2B customers are equal. Some may generate strong sales revenue but also involve a lot of costs to maintain. That’s why, to some B2B businesses, sales revenue is important, but profits are more important because they provide a stronger measure on the health and viability of the business.
- WEBSITE VISITS (SESSIONS): A visit is one individual visitor who arrives at a web site and proceeds to browse. A visit counts all visitors, no matter how many times the same visitor may have been to the site.
- WEBSITE UNIQUE VISITORS (USERS): A unique visit tells which visits from previous item are visiting the site for the first time. The website can track this as unique by the IP address of the computer.
- MOBILE VS. DESKTOP VISITS: According to Marketing Land, mobile devices are responsible for 30% of website visits and 15% of online orders. And growing. So understanding what devices prospect use to access a website and the experience they have on a mobile device is now important.
- BOUNCE RATE: The percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). Bounce Rates are considered a measure of a website’s relevance because, in most cases, if a website is relevant, visitors will view more than a single page.
- SALES LEADS: The identification of a person or entity that has the interest, authority and budget to be a customer. From a measurement standpoint, this might be determined by someone who subscribes to a newsletter, downloads an ebooks or attends a webinar. Or the total of people who do these and other related activities.
- QUALIFIED LEADS: Like profits may be more important to some businesses than sales; qualified leads are more important than leads. A qualified lead with need, budget and buying authority; who meets the customer profile or Buyer Persona and has a buying horizon that falls within your business plan. The criteria for a qualified lead is often debated withing B2B companies. That’s why making “Qualified Leads” a KPI is productive because the definitaion of the KPIs have to be agreed-to before it can be measured.
- COST PER ACQUISITION (CPA): How much is it costing you to acquire each lead? How many leads are generated by each one of your marketing efforts, and what’s the value of those leads? Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is a metric that helps connect the value of marketing with results. It help determine if there is Return on Investment (ROI) for the initiatives being undertaken.
- TRAFFIC SOURCES: People like to do business with people they know. If marketing effort generNow that you know CPA in general.
- COST PER CLICK (CPC): If paid advertising is used, CPC is the actual price paid for each click, Cost-per click is important because it: 1) quantifies how much has to be invested to generate interest, 2) can often be tracked to a specific keyword and ad that generated the click and 3) can be changed up or down to optimize results relative to investments.
- CLICK THROUGH RATE (CTR): The number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times the ad is shown expressed as a percentage (clicks ÷ impressions = CTR). A good click though rate depends on various factors such as channel (Paid search, Display, Facebook) and position. But good click rates usually begin in the range of 1% to 3%.
- CONVERSION RATE: The percentage of users who take a desired action is the conversion rate. The desired action can take many forms, varying from site to site. Examples include sales of products, membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any activity beyond simple
page browsing. Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics in digital marketing and, in marketing, essential to determining return on investment (ROI) - MACRO CONVERSIONS: Because conversion rate is so important, a number of conversion activities might be tracked to understand the buying process. A macro conversion the primary conversion on a website, for example a completed online order or a completed lead generation form.
- MICRO CONVERSIONS: Smaller engagements such as a newsletter sign up or a user watching a product video and micro conversion. Taken together, macro and micro conversions enable an understanding of a customer’s buying process.
- CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE (CLV): The dollar value of a customer relationship, based on the present value of the projected future cash flow from the customer relationship. The value of knowing CLV is that it is is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.
- RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI): A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. ROI is the measurement that reveals how well a business is being managed. ROI is a calculation. Here are most often used calculations.
If you are a B2B marketer, do these KPIs provide the actionable scorecard to keep your business on track? Is there anything that is left out? Or you would want to consider?
