What are marketing metrics?

Marketing metrics are what marketers use to monitor, record, and measure
progress over time. The metrics themselves are varied and can change from
platform to platform. Marketers need to hone in on their goals and choose the
metrics that will track their successes and failures. Although there are many
working metrics you could keep track of, you need to hone in on what actually
matters for each campaign.

Why do marketing metrics matter?

According to a Google study done in partnership with MIT, 89% of leading
marketers use strategic metrics, like gross revenue, market share, or CLV, to
measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Some of the benefits of using
these and other metrics include:

 Having data to support informed decision making

 Knowing which channels provide the highest ROI

 Justifying marketing spend and overall budget allocations

 Increasing results across the board

 Honing in on where and how to maximize lead conversions

CMO Radek Vanis recently took to LinkedIn to explain his thought process
around why marketing metrics matter to him.

“Measuring the ROI of marketing initiatives in B2B [has] become a somewhat

controversial topic,” Vanis says. “We know that our sales cycles take quarters,
even years, yet we often give in to the temptation of calculating the metric
early and locking the measurements in short intervals.”

He goes on to point out “recent research shows that:

  77% of marketers measure ROI within the first month of their campaign,
trying to prove ROI in a shorter amount of time than their sales cycle

 Of those marketers, 55% admitted that they had a sales cycle of three
months or more

 And only 4% of marketers even measure ROI over a six-month period or

longer”

So not only do marketing metrics help you and your team improve, but they
also communicate the value your department provides to the company as a
whole in terms that stakeholders can appreciate.

Do internet marketing metrics differ

from traditional ones?
Most internet marketing metrics can be tracked automatically. Traditional
metrics may yield ambiguous results since you’re not always there in person
to see the effects. Plus, programs like Wrike make it easy to translate that
data into visual reports with actionable insights.

Another big difference: variety. There are far more digital marketing channels
than traditional ones, thanks to an ever-growing number of social media apps,
content marketing types, and virtual ad spaces.

Both matter, though, and you should never run a marketing campaign without
tracking your progress along the way.

How to set your key marketing metrics

There are many lists out there that will tell you what you need to track and
what you’re missing. But the truth is, preferred marketing metrics are unique to
every business and project manager.

It all boils down to two main ideas: goals and focus.

 1. Goals
For example, if your goal is to increase sales by 5% this quarter, tracking
the number of likes on your recent Instagram post probably shouldn’t be
your top priority. Choose marketing metrics that are directly connected to
your desired outcome.

Also, don’t forget strategy. When outlining your goals, it’s good to know
how you’ll pursue them. Whatever strategy you choose will also
determine which marketing metrics are best.

In the above example, if you know that BOFU content, such as a blog
post on competitor alternatives that heavily features your product, is a
big part of your strategy, then you will want to monitor metrics such as
CTA link clicks, page views, and average time on page.

1. Focus
Sure, there are pie-in-the-sky metrics that marketers get really excited
about tracking. After all, we know that knowledge is power, and it’s
natural to want to know what’s going on in every facet of your business.
But we know from personal experience that it’s often time-consuming
and counterproductiive to chase after every metric just because you
think you should.

Examples of key marketing metrics

Here are some must-know terms, with definitions and examples you can use
to build a high impact portfolio of custom marketing metrics for future
campaigns:
1. Cost per acquisition (CPA)
CPA is how much you spend to get one new customer. This can vary by
campaign, channel, and even time of year.

According to Global Business Strategy Expert Anuj Bhatia, “Regarded as one

of the most important metrics in marketing, especially in the digital marketing
era, Cost Per Acquisition or CPA as it is commonly referred to, is the
aggregate cost incurred to acquire a paying customer. While you can calculate
your overall CPA as an indicator of your overall success with your marketing
budget, channel level CPA is routinely utilized to optimize the budget
allocations to different marketing channels.”

How to measure it: Gather both marketing expense sheets and sales data to
measure your CPA. It is then calculated by dividing your marketing spend
(Campaign Cost) by the number of customers acquired (conversion). Here is
the calculation:

CPA = Campaign Cost/Number of conversions

As Bhatia goes on to say, “CPA is actually a very useful financial metric that
can be used to assess the revenue impact of marketing efforts. When
monitored in conjunction with Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) and Average
Ticket Size/Order Value, it indicates the present & future profitability and
sustainability of the business.”

As far as figuring out what a good CPA is, it varies from industry to industry.
Instead, focus on lowering your own business’s CPA over time in a
sustainable way.

2. Cost per lead (CPL)

Before you can acquire new customers, you have to bring in new leads. Cost
per lead measures the dollar amount of each new lead by campaign, channel,
or overall spending. This sales and marketing metric helps users create better
goals, track ROI, and adjust budgets accordingly. Budgets related to CPL
include items such as paid ad placements and social media monitoring
platforms.

How to measure it: The total CPL equals the total dollar amount spent on
marketing divided by the total number of new leads acquired in a given time
period. Calculations like these are useful to do every quarter or, if you have
the bandwidth, once per month.

Also, it’s important to have a system in place that allows you to view and
record where each individual lead came from. Otherwise, your data might
include unrelated sales pipelines that your team didn’t work on.

3. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value is the total dollar amount a single account or person is
projected to spend on your business from their very first purchase all the way
to their last. This calculation is based on your pricing model, any potential
upsells on the horizon, and important forecasting data, such as historical
records for similar customers. In marketing, CLV proves that quality is often
better than quantity, so there should be some campaigns aimed at existing
customers to retain them long term.

How to measure it: Hubspot has a great calculator you can use, but if you’re
old school, here’s the formula: CLV = Average Customer Value x Average
Customer Lifespan.

4. Click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate is the number of times an ad, link, or website is clicked on
compared to the number of impressions. High click-through rates (around 4%)
mean the copy displayed is persuasive and well-placed. Once a user has
clicked through, however, the rest of their experience has to line up with their
expectations for taking the action in the first place.

How to measure it: Paid ad platforms like Facebook offer this data for free
within the platform. However, you can always use a calculator like the one
created by WebFX by manually entering your total number of clicks and
impressions.

5. Bounce rate
Essentially, bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who look at one
page then leave right after. Having a high bounce rate indicates that your
content, copy, or offer aren’t keeping people on the site, which also translates
to sales pipeline breakdowns.

Dan Sanchez, host of the B2B Growth podcast, says, “One of the most
important metrics you should be tracking on your website is bounce rate. If
your bounce rate is high, you may need to fix this one thing on your landing
page: your call to action. Either it doesn’t address the audience’s problems, or
it doesn’t lead with a strong value proposition.”
He goes on to advise, “you want every site visitor to take a small step towards
a purchase. So make sure your CTA is:

 Relevant

 Compelling

 And clearly defines what steps the visitor should take next”

How to measure it: First, figure out what is marketing analytics, and what
information do you need from your data. Website analytics tools like Google
Analytics will automatically calculate bounce rate for you. The trick is to lower
the percentage over time. In a perfect world, your bounce rate would be 0%.
But in general, a website is considered successful if the bounce rate is 40% or
under.

6. Goal completions
Goal completions are also known as conversions and refer to any instance in
which a potential customer takes an action you led them to. For example,
clicking the CTA button at the bottom of a sales page or adding their email to
a form to receive a downloadable piece of content is a goal completion. This
marketing metric works well for measuring quantities at any funnel stage.

How to measure it: The unit of measurement for a goal completion is

different for every platform. In general, you can count on adding up the total
number of leads who have taken an action you’ve either asked them or
persuaded them to do. You can track this manually or by using digital
marketing tools available for that specific platform.

For example, you can use a LinkedIn article with a CTA asking readers to
subscribe to your newsletter at the link provided. Every individual who clicks
the link and successfully takes that action equals one goal completion.
7. Lead-to-customer conversion rate
It’s important to measure how many leads your marketing efforts are
generating. But if you stop there, you're missing a crucial piece of the puzzle:
how many leads actually turn into customers? Knowing this figure can tell you
whether your sales team needs a higher volume of leads, higher quality leads,
or additional supporting content to help close deals.

How to measure it: The benchmark for conversion rates will vary by industry,
but a few minutes of Googling should give you a solid understanding of the
number you should be aiming for.

According to Capterra, B2B software website conversion rates sit at an

average of 7%, for example, while hardware is at 5% and retail is 3%. It’s also
important to consider conversion rates at each stage of the funnel, as your
middle and bottom of the funnel rates should theoretically be higher than your
top of funnel numbers.

8. Multi-touch attribution
Very few people research and buy during the same web browsing session.
Most people will start their search for a product or stumble across a piece of
content, click through to your website and poke around your blog. Then days
or weeks later, search for your company name, click on a paid ad, and
purchase.

By only crediting the point of conversion, you’re not getting a full picture of the
customer journey, and you’re undervaluing key aspects of your marketing
efforts.

How to measure it: There are many types of attribution models you can use,
depending on what you want to learn and how your marketing organization
works.
The W-Shaped Attribution Model is one way to give credit to each stage of the
funnel, from first touch to lead conversion to opportunity creation, and gain a
deeper understanding of the customer journey.

In this attribution model, 30% of the credit goes to the first click, 30% of the
credit goes to the click that created the lead conversion, and 30% goes to the
click that created the opportunity. 10% of the credit is given to all other
touches.

9. Engaged time
It's not enough to just measure time spent on page because you don’t know if
it’s active time or if your content is just open in an idle tab. Tracking engaged
time lets you know how long users are actively paying attention to your
content, and therefore, how valuable that content is to your target audience.
Are they even seeing your CTA? What can you leave out that people aren’t
paying attention to, and what do you need to rework?

How to measure it: Content analytics software like Chartbeat or even

WordPress plugins like Riveted can track user activity, including scrolling,
clicking, using the keyboard, and page visibility, to determine whether the
reader is actively engaging with your content or in an idle state.

10. Quality of inbound links

Search engines judge high-quality websites as trustworthy and reputable
resources. Low-quality websites can penalize your website rankings, which is
why it’s much more important to have fewer high-quality links than dozens of
low-quality ones.

Instead of tracking the number of inbound links you're getting, focus instead
on these questions: How have certain inbound links helped you rank for
certain keywords? Is your organic traffic increasing?
How to measure it: To determine quality links, check whether the site is:

 Relevant to your site

 Authoritative/trustworthy

 Attracting a human audience, or solely designed for web crawlers

 Linking to other spammy sites, like online gambling, payday loans, etc.

 Selling links

11. Social media engagement

While it’s good to have a large number of followers across your social media
platforms, it doesn’t help your business if they’re simply ignoring you. How
many people are clicking on and interacting with your posts? And who are
they? Answering these questions will help ensure you’re delivering the right
content to the right people in the right place.

How to measure it: Engagement types vary depending on the social media
platform. Keep an eye on Facebook's engagement score and the number of
clicks, likes, shares, and comments, Twitter retweets, replies, or favorites,
Pinterest likes, comments, or repins, Google+ likes, comments, or shares, etc.

Speaking about how Wrike helps to monitor engagement rates, Kate

Chalmers, Director of Marketing Operations at Hootsuite, said, "We've got a
specific structure that we've set up in Wrike so we can look at our campaigns
and releases, and compare quarter over quarter what we're doing. We're
constantly wanting to make sure we're remaining stable or getting faster at
what we do."

12. Unengaged subscribers

Some people who subscribe to your list won't stay engaged with your emails,
which is why so many marketers keep an eye on how many recipients
unsubscribe. But not everyone will go through the process of unsubscribing,
especially when it takes fewer clicks to just trash emails that aren’t of interest.

But for the health of your subscriber list, it's important to track unengaged
subscribers. As Lindsay Kolowich at HubSpot points out, email clients can flag
low engagement rates and deliver these "graymail" messages straight to the
junk folder, which means your emails are being delivered but not seen.

How to measure it: Decide on your marketing organization's definition of

“unengaged.” Is it someone who hasn't clicked on an email in three months? A
year? Then, consider implementing an automatic unsubscribe that will remove
these recipients from your list, and send an email notifying them that they've
been unsubscribed.

13. Website conversion rate

A lot of your marketing efforts go into driving traffic to your website, and you
want to keep an eye on how many people you're successfully attracting to
your site and where they're coming from. But if you just focus on visits without
equal emphasis on conversion, you’re wasting your time and money.

Putting in a little effort into bumping up conversion rates can have a big impact
on your business — imagine the difference that even a 1% or 2% boost in new
customers could do for your bottom line.

How to measure it: First, define what qualifies as a conversion. Is it a

purchase? Booking a consultation or requesting additional information?
Signing up for a free trial? Once you’ve figured out what you want to measure,
set up a landing page that visitors will only see after they’ve converted. Just
make sure traffic can’t be sent to that LP in any other way, or else you’ll get
skewed figures.
14. MQL to SQL ratio
MQLs, or Marketing Qualified Leads, are generally defined as bottom-of-the-
funnel prospects who have indicated they’re ready to purchase, or at least talk
to a salesperson, by downloading buying guides, requesting a demo, or
signing up for a free trial. Sales Qualified Leads are potential customers that
sales determine are ready for a direct follow-up.

Looking at the percentage of MQLs that are accepted as SQLs is a good

indicator of the health of your pipeline and your marketing team’s ability to
qualify and screen leads. It’s also a great indication of how well aligned your
marketing and sales team are since a low ratio raises a red flag that there’s a
disconnect between marketing and sales.

How to measure it: Divide the number of SQLs by the number of MQLs to
calculate your MQL to SQL Conversion Rate.

What’s a good benchmark? After analyzing hundreds of companies, Implicit

found that the average conversion rate was 13%, and took an average of 84
days to convert. But keep in mind that this number varies greatly depending
on the source of the lead. For example, website leads converted at an
average of 31.3%, referrals at 24.7%, and webinars at 17.8%. Email
campaigns convert at just 0.9%, lead lists at 2.5%, and events at 4.2%.

15. Internal metrics

It’s important to keep an eye on external metrics like lead quantity, quality, and
conversion. But if any of these numbers start to slip, how will you know what
to fix if you don’t pay attention to how the work gets done in the first place?

When it comes to getting the most out of your internal resources, don’t just
trust your gut. Keep your marketing team running effectively by tracking the
number of hours wasted in status meetings, on repeatable work that could be
automated, dealing with unnecessary interruptions, and the efficiency of your
review and approvals process.

How to measure it: Hold frequent check-ins with your team to identify
roadblocks and gather feedback about how processes can be
improved. Premier Sotheby's Realty uses Wrike to track and improve their
work management and quickly report on the team's productivity in real
numbers.

"The biggest benefit of Wrike is that when you're working with 900 individual
personalities and independent contractors, being able to prove your value is
crucial," says Christina Anstett, Direct Marketing Specialist at Sotheby's.
"Pulling a report and showing them how many jobs were completed on their
behalf during a certain time frame is very, very powerful for us."

Laser focus your attention to succeed

Although you can measure everything, it’s important to understand what
you’re measuring and why. But don’t get too caught up in the time-consuming
task of manual data entry. According to corporate transformation expert
and TED speaker Yves Morieux, “when businesses focus too much on
guidelines, processes, and metrics, they can actually prevent employees from
doing their best work.”

Automating these processes where possible will free up your time to

concentrate on the creative side of your marketing campaigns. Metrics mean
nothing if they aren't used to be creative in your future projects, and your mind
should always be set on the question: "how can this data help our team to
make something great?"

How Wrike can help you manage your

marketing campaigns
Save time by automating how to capture, manage, and measure marketing
data with Wrike. Use our platform to explore features like detailed tasks and
subtask timelines, templates for everything from event marketing to social
media campaigns, and centralized data hubs where all your marketing metrics
can be seamlessly integrated.

Wrike Marketing Insights can import data from over 50 digital marketing tools,
allowing you to have an overview of all the relevant data in one place. Wrike
then transforms this data into actionable insights, allowing you to see exactly
where your efforts should be placed, and tracking your work in customizable
dashboards in real time.

A Guide to Marketing Analytics

Marketers are always trying to improve, grow, and reach more customers. What’s the best
way to do that? Well, you certainly have to start with a great product or service, but you also
need data. Data analytics in marketing tells you what’s working, who your customers should
be, and where to focus your marketing resources.

The marketing skillset doesn’t usually include number crunching, but it does include
understanding and acting on a range of marketing analytics in order to maximize a marketer’s
time and the company’s resources.
What is marketing analytics?
Marketing data analytics is the use and study of data related to marketing activities. Data
analytics in marketing is used to determine the success of past campaigns in terms of ROI,
conversions, customer behavior and preferences, and organic traffic. By analyzing the data
regarding past campaigns using marketing analytics, marketing departments should be able
to use patterns or trends to improve activities, resource allocation, and campaign planning.

The marketing data analytics sphere usually includes three components: analyzing the
present, reporting on the past, and predicting for the future.

 Analyzing the present: Marketers need to assess marketing analytics from current
campaigns and activities in order to get a clear picture of where the marketing activities
 stand and to compare them to past campaigns. In this case, they’ll be focused on website
traffic and sources for it, social media engagement and click-throughs, as well as the current
state of the sales pipeline and revenue metrics.

 Reporting on the past: Marketing departments also rely on reported marketing data
analytics at the completion of campaigns, focusing on information such
as lead conversion, customer lifetime value, and sales funnel churn rate.

 Predicting for the future: Finally, marketing departments rely on marketing analytics to
plan future projects. This type of data analytics in marketing will include lead scoring,
targeted content distribution, and upselling readiness and relies on datasets as well as
modeling and AI.
 Deliver marketing campaigns with
effortless collaboration
Try Wrike for Marketing

Why is marketing analytics important?

Marketing analytics gives marketers the insights they need to plan successful campaigns and
carry out activities that will help them reach their strategic goals. Without marketing data
analytics, marketing departments would be reliant on guesswork or anecdotal evidence to
make choices about how to spend the budget, what channels to use to promote their brand,
and what customers to target to reach the best outcome.
Who uses marketing analytics?
Every member of the marketing team can use some form of marketing analytics. When the
chief marketing officer and top-level managers are putting together the company’s marketing
strategy, they’ll use marketing data analytics to design the right strategy. When a marketing
manager is putting together the marketing plan, they’ll use marketing analytics to determine
which channels should receive the most focus when it comes to content distribution. When an
SEO specialist is creating a plan for keyword optimization, they’ll use marketing analytics to
choose the correct keywords to include and important competitor behavior.

In short, every marketer can benefit from using data analytics in marketing if they take the
right actions based on marketing analytics information.

What actions can you take based on analytics?

Marketing departments can take an almost unlimited number of actions based on marketing
analytics, but this is a selection of some of the more common options:

 Incorporate keywords: Marketers can use keyword analytics software to determine the
specific words and phrases they need to optimize in order to gain organic traffic through
web searches.

 Replicate successful campaigns: Social media data analytics in marketing (there are often
basic versions built into each platform) can give marketing departments an understanding of
what types of content or topics resonate with followers and result in traffic to the website or
newsletter sign-ups. Marketers can then increase that type of content to increase traffic.

 Engage new markets: Marketing departments can engage with a new segment of the
market or launch a campaign that targets a different demographic if analytics show
prospective customers in those areas.

 Optimize CRM: Agencies can also address bottlenecks in customer relationship management
as marketing analytics are included in those platforms to help assess funnel and churn.

 Adjust product fit: Because marketing departments can access behavioral, purchase history,
and website journey data for customer bases, they can better predict customers’ needs and
purchase preferences.
Marketing departments have a range of marketing analytics tools and software at their
fingertips. They should be using as many of those as are appropriate to improve marketing
activities and plans every day.
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How To Track your Digital Channels with Digital Marketing KPIs

Introducing B2B marketing analytics
B2B and B2C marketing are similar in many ways, but they are also quite different. B2C
marketing involves appealing to a customer’s emotional reaction with the transactional goal
of them purchasing your product or service. On the other hand, B2B marketing involves
building brand recognition and relationships that can turn into leads to generate sales.

To that end, B2B marketing analytics relies heavily on keyword analysis, target market data,
lead generation, lead scoring, and optimizing the lead-to-customer ratio. One basic element to
consider with B2B marketing data analytics is using data to get a better picture of the specific
demographic of your target audience, which will likely include one or more decision-makers
at a company. Using keyword analytics as well as Google Analytics, the marketing team will
be able to get a broad understanding of the branding required for this audience.

Marketing analytics can help B2B marketers determine the optimal top-of-funnel prospective
list, as well as the most successful forms of repeated communication.
Important concepts within marketing
analytics
Certain concepts within marketing analytics can be critical to maximizing efforts and
resources. These important concepts within marketing analytics can mean the difference
between an average marketing team and one that truly excels in research, planning, and
execution.

 Customer lifetime value (LTV): Marketing departments can use predictive data analytics in
marketing to determine the customer’s lifetime value to the company based on past
purchases, purchase frequency, and average customer lifespan. This allows them to make
predictions about future ROI and customer engagement.

 Return on investment (ROI): In marketing terms, analyzing ROI refers to the amount of
profit or revenue growth that can be attributed to marketing activities. Capturing this ROI
data gives companies another metric for marketing teams’ success.

 Cost per lead: To determine how cost-effective a campaign is, a marketing department must
understand the cost per lead data. Cost per lead refers to the average cost for generating a
new lead. Cost per lead can be used to help calculate the marketing ROI.

 Lead-to-customer conversion rate: Another metric marketing analytics can help measure is
the lead-to-customer conversion rate or the percentage of leads that resulted in sales. This
type of data can help direct marketing departments to increase marketing that generates
specific types of leads that are proving most successful in converting to sales.

How to choose marketing analytics software

Choosing marketing analytics software can be difficult because there are a lot of options on
the market. It might seem like you need a different tool for every metric you’d like to
measure (though that isn’t always the case).
Wrike can import metrics for up to 50 different digital marketing tools, helping you
streamline your workflow and take your marketing to the next level. Learn more about how
to choose the right marketing tools and software in our guide.