16 Key Marketing Metrics That Are Important to Track

The goal of any marketing plan is growth–but how should you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? Tracking and analyzing the right marketing metrics can be key to quantifying success.

With the shift to digital marketing, data is readily available across many marketing platforms. However, tracking the right marketing metrics—those that are meaningful to your business—can help you stay focused on what truly drives performance and growth.

Metrics help marketers in the marketing planning process and track their performance toward goals.

It’s important to track key marketing metrics that are strategic and meaningful to your business. By doing so, you can better understand marketing performance, and in the bigger picture, marketers can explain to company stakeholders the impact marketing efforts have on an organization’s growth.

What are marketing metrics?

Marketing metrics are performance data that help marketers monitor, record, and measure the progress of marketing plans and campaigns over time. The importance of marketing metrics cannot be understated, as they help marketers regularly track and measure success and gauge whether goals are met.

16 key marketing metrics to track

What are the most important marketing metrics to focus on to accurately measure performance? There are several types of metrics to use to track success. Here’s our list of the key metrics in marketing to track on a continual basis, sorted by metric type:

1. Brand Awareness Metrics
   • Impressions
   • First-page keyword rankings
   • Social media engagement metrics
2. Pipeline Metrics
   • Second stage meetings
   • Sales qualified leads
   • Deals closed from marketing
   • Pipeline progression
3. Conversions Metrics
   • Conversion rate
   • Value per visit
   • Marketing qualified leads
4. Marketing Performance Metrics
   • Cost per lead
   • Marketing ROI
   • CLV/CAC ratio
5. Retention Metrics
   • Customer churn
   • Customer LTV
   • Net promoter score (NPS)

Brand awareness metrics

Brand awareness metrics measure how familiar your target audience is with your organization. Brand awareness is the first step in the customer buying process. Here is a list of key marketing metrics to measure brand awareness.

• Impressions
• First-page keyword rankings
• Social media engagement metrics

Impressions

Impressions are typically used to track digital advertising campaigns on search engines like Google and Bing and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

In addition to digital advertising, impressions can be used in organic searches. You can see website impressions within a specified period with Google Search Console, for example. If you’re looking to drive awareness, impressions are an important metric for measuring performance.

First-page keyword rankings

Organic search can be an important channel for many organizations to increase their online presence. Keyword rankings for a website can indicate SEO performance in web searches.

Very few users will click beyond the first page of online search results. That’s why ranking keywords on the first page of Google (and other search engines) can be a meaningful metric for tracking awareness.

 

Social media engagement

There are several social media platforms for organizations to use as a marketing tool to drive awareness. For certain organizations, some platforms may be more successful than others.

Whatever platforms you use, tracking social engagement metrics is an excellent way to measure awareness in digital marketing. These marketing metrics measure activity when content is posted on social media, typically including likes, shares, and comments.

Pipeline metrics

Once you’ve built brand awareness, the next step is to turn that awareness into leads. Here are the key pipeline metrics to track how effectively you’re moving prospects through the sales funnel.

• Second stage meetings
• Sales qualified leads
• Deals closed from marketing
• Pipeline progression

Second-stage meetings

Second-stage meetings are meetings with sales leads past the initial qualification stage.

For example, these leads have already had a demo of a product or an initial meeting with a sales team, and the probability of closing the deal is far more likely. Leads in the second-stage meeting are past the qualifications, and there is a true opportunity to sell clients or customers, making this a key metric to track.

Sales qualified leads

Sales-qualified leads (SQL) are leads that have a high probability of becoming customers.

SQLs are seen as a better fit than marketing leads. In terms of marketing metrics, this is a critical one to track because you’ll know how effective your plan is in actually generating leads that meet the qualifications to become a customer. If you’re driving leads that are not qualified, you’re just wasting budget.

Deals closed from marketing

Deals closed from marketing is exactly how it sounds. It tracks the number of closed deals that were generated through marketing efforts. This greatly indicates your marketing plan’s effectiveness in targeting the right audience.

Pipeline progression (close rate)

The close rate is the average sales cycle time, which is the length of time it takes to close a deal. This marketing metric measures how efficiently a sales professional or sales team performs to close deals compared to the number of incoming leads.

Conversion metrics 

Inbound marketing has become a central part of acquiring customers. Measuring website conversion metrics through platforms like Google Analytics can help you better understand digital marketing performance. When users arrive at your website, the ultimate goal is to get them to convert into leads. Here is a brief list of key metrics that measure conversions:

• Conversion rate
• Value per visit
• Marketing qualified leads

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is an important metric that is key to tracking the performance of digital marketing efforts.

Tracked in Google Analytics, conversion rate is a standard marketing metric used to track the rate of users reaching the end goal, or a “conversion” set in Google Analytics. A few common examples of a conversion could be an online purchase, a form-fill, or a download.

Value per visit

Value per visit focuses on improving the average value of each visit to the website.

In Google Analytics, you can assign each conversion with a value amount. For example, if you estimate that a form-fill demo request lead is worth $500, you can measure the value of each web visit.

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead that has indicated an interest in a product or service that the marketing team deems is likely to become a customer.

After an initial interaction, an MQL is the next step to converting a lead to an SQL and eventually to a customer. An increase in this metric indicates an increase in overall marketing performance.

Marketing performance metrics

Performance metrics are meant to analyze your marketing funnel, by providing a bottom-line view of how effective your marketing plan is. These key marketing metrics are a great check of the financial health of a business in regard to its marketing efforts.

• Cost per lead
• Marketing ROI
• CLV/CAC ratio

Cost per lead (CPL)

Cost per lead (CPL) is a marketing metric that measures how much it costs you to acquire a lead. This is another important marketing metric that is meant to analyze your efforts with a bottom-line view. CPL is calculated by dividing the amount spent on a marketing initiative by the number of leads generated.

Marketing ROI (business value)

Whenever you invest in something, you expect to get a good return on the investment – marketing is no different. The marketing return on investment (MROI) is the revenue yielded from the amount allocated to a marketing plan, campaign, or activity. Marketing ROI is calculated by dividing the amount spent on marketing activities by revenue. Learn more about how to accurately measure marketing ROI here.

CLV/CAC ratio

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV) are two marketing metrics that are important to use when measuring performance. Customer acquisition cost tells you how much it costs to acquire a new customer, and customer lifetime value tells you how much a customer is actually worth to your business. When combined, the CLV/CAC ratio is an important marketing metric for business performance.

Retention metrics

While attracting new customers is important, retaining them is equally critical. Retention metrics (aka customer retention metrics) focus on keeping your existing customers engaged, which can be more cost-effective than acquisition and help boost long-term revenue.

Though retention directly relates to customer service, marketing can play a role. A great way to improve retention metrics is through marketing. Here are some key metrics on customer retention that should be measured and tracked.

• Customer churn
• Customer LTV
• Net promoter score (NPS)

Customer churn

Customer churn is the rate at which customers stop buying from or subscribing to your organization over a certain period of time. For subscription-based businesses (for example, SaaS companies) this is critical, as reducing churn means more predictable revenue.

Customer LTV (customer lifetime value)

Customer LTV looks at the revenue from a single customer account over the entire customer lifespan. It is another important marketing metric that measures customer retention. Focusing on customer LTV as a metric is important because it helps companies focus on targeting ideal customers and reducing customer acquisition costs.

Image credit: getthematic.com

Net promoter score (NPS)

To put it simply, the net promoter score is a scale of 1-10 of how likely a customer would recommend your company to a friend or colleague. This metric is used by marketing teams and organizations to quantify customer loyalty and is an indication of growth. Measuring NPS is a key metric that focuses on the customer satisfaction aspect to improve retention.

The power of metrics in marketing

When considering the proper mix of marketing metrics to track, it’s important to use an array of metrics that measure the performance at each part of the marketing funnel. Use these key metrics in marketing to track your marketing performance.

At Planful, we make tracking these key metrics easier with our marketing performance management software.

Ready to build detailed marketing plans and put marketing budgets to good use to reach your strategic marketing goals? Explore our interactive demo of Planful for Marketing.