It is important however, to ensure that the KPIs used are relevant as well as quantifiable. Simply gathering large amounts of data can actually hinder the evaluation progress, especially if it is non-actionable and difficult to track.

So what are some best practices?

1. Always include marketing measurement and reporting as key components in the initial stages of campaign planning.
2. Establish a clear starting point so that you have something to measure against.
3. Know where your business and your competitors stand, so that the impact of your marketing campaigns will be much more evident and accurate.  And always tie your KPIs in with the overall business goals. If the focus is on pushing sales growth, ensure that you have a way to work with your sales teams to track new sales to your marketing campaigns.
4. Define your target audiences and goals for each campaign clearly. Marketing KPIs are not a standardised set of measurements that work across all companies, channels, and campaigns. They need to be adjusted according to your specific type of campaign and objectives.
5. Different channels require different tracking mechanisms. Ensure that the appropriate infrastructure is set up to support all marketing channels.
6. Review your KPIs carefully to avoid inaccurate or inconsistent data.
7. After you have defined your KPIs, remember to review if they are working or if there is any fault in the process that may hinder the collection of accurate data.

With the proliferation of digital channels today, it has become increasingly simple for companies to monitor their KPIs online. For a more holistic gauge of a company’s marketing efforts and awareness levels in the market however, external research by specialised marketing firms is still required.

Important marketing KPIs to track

Branding

Brand awareness is one of the most important KPIs of any marketing campaign, and measures your brand’s reputation and level of recognition in the marketplace. An increase in brand awareness over time often indicates successfully executed marketing initiatives, and may lead to higher sales and revenues.

Due to the larger scope of this KPI, many businesses approach marketing research organisations that specialise in conducting brand research studies and collecting and analysing data. Through focus groups, panels, and surveys, these companies can help businesses measure their levels of brand perception in the marketplace in terms of awareness, sentiment, loyalty, etc., oftentimes in comparison with competing brands. As mentioned earlier, it is important to plan ahead, especially for KPIs such as brand awareness. Ensure that you have an initial idea of where your company stands before you launch your marketing campaign so that you will be able to accurately measure its impact afterwards.

There are, of course, methods to track brand awareness in-house as well (and for free), though they are mostly limited to online monitoring, where results would be less exhaustive than a full brand study.

Tools such as Google Analytics can easily generate data such as number of visits to your website, traffic sources, new versus returning visitors, most searched keywords, etc., which will give you a general feel for your brand’s level of awareness online. These can be tracked throughout the entire duration of campaign, and will provide a broad overview of whether your campaign was able to bring in a new supply of visitors.

Another useful tool is Google’s Insights for Search. It generates top search terms related to a specified product or keyword, as well as search terms that have risen by the most statistically significant amounts. This is a good way to track and better understand your competitors’ offerings, and provides useful insights on how other brands are gaining their share of search and awareness within the online community.

You may also check where your company’s website stands in relation to your competitors through Google Trends for Websites where you can compare up to five websites over a specified period of time.

Website and Online Traffic

In addition to measuring and comparing general online traffic, there are also a few other ways to measure your marketing performance via your company website. Depending on how comprehensive your marketing campaign is, you may choose to tag each medium so that you are able to identify which source your visitor came from. These tags (called “UTM tags”) can be used within Google Analytics as well, and appear at the end of the URL. Using unique tags will allow you to clearly see where your visitors came from, which mediums generated the most traffic, and which sources achieved the most conversions.

For example, you may want to compare the effectiveness of an online banner versus a promotional email – by giving each medium a unique tag, Google Analytics will be able to clearly track which medium generated more traffic to your website.

Of course, if you are conducting search engine marketing (SEM) with platforms like Google Adwords, you will automatically receive performance reports, which will indicate how well your advertisement performed and its resulting impact.

Last but not least, remember to monitor your online conversions in addition to traffic. Find out whether your online traffic is converting into leads by tracking the number of downloads, enquiry submissions, brochure requests, and subscriptions to your mailing list. These can also be set up for monitoring on Google Analytics.

Offline Campaign Responses

While many businesses are focusing more and more on online performance measurements, the best way to gain a holistic view of your marketing performance is to employ an integrated approach, so traditional, offline methods should not be neglected.

Depending on your target customer, the general marketplace still consists of a portion of people who prefer to call in for enquiries rather than search online. If your marketing campaign consists of a few different mediums, a great way to track the effectiveness of each medium is to use unique phone numbers.

That way, you can easily find out which medium is most effective simply by tracking the number of calls you receive.

Press Coverage

If your marketing campaign consists of a large press component, it might be worthwhile to hire a media monitoring agency to assist in measuring the amount of press generated from the campaign. Most of these agencies will cover all local print media, and with an added fee, online and broadcast media as well.

In addition to collating all related press, they will also be able to calculate an approximate advertising value per coverage, making it much more quantifiable when measuring results. If press coverage is not expected to be too significant, simply keep a log of all press enquiries, taking note of which publications will be covering a story on your campaign, and follow up on the publication date. Most editors are happy to send you a copy of the publication after the story is released – if not, buying a copy off the newsstand won’t cost too much.

The same applies to online coverage, though it is also useful to sign up for Google Alerts, where you can submit your brand name, campaign name and/or related keywords to be tracked, and then be notified of any related coverage on the web.

Events

Launch parties, speaking engagements, or workshops are not only effective channels for marketing, but also easy-to-measure KPIs.

While the number of event participants will provide a quantifiable measurement of its success, the event itself will also offer opportunities to distribute promotional material to a captive audience.

As suggested within the previous KPI sections, unique tags or phone numbers can be used within promotional material distributed at the event, which will offer further data on the success of the event and campaign based on the number of participants who follow up with enquiries after the event.

One of the most important reasons for measuring marketing performance is to learn and improve. Results gathered following each campaign allow marketers to identify changes that can be made, new marketing trends that may be emerging, and ways to influence prospects and customers.