Mind your business, don't just phone it in—you need to take the time to think critically about your company's pain points and the available solutions to these problems. And one way you can do this is by focusing on your key performance indicators (KPIs).
We get it… you’re not a math nerd, and tracking your KPIs doesn’t exactly scream exciting day, does it? But these handy stats and analytics are there to help inform you of what’s working, and what isn’t when it comes to managing your campaign’s goals and expectations.
It’s also how you'll prove your value to clients. Producing a wonderful piece of content is all well and good, but if that’s where the list of positives stop, you aren’t doing your job to the fullest. You need to know which key performance indicators are important to the client, and track these KPIs in order to gauge valuable changes.
Here are the top inbound marketing KPIs to focus on for your next campaign:
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Inbound Marketing Sales
You should be able to tell at a glance how much revenue your business is bringing in through inbound marketing—but you also need to understand more than just the numbers. After all, you need to know what your company is spending money on and whether or not it’s being used effectively.
What you need to look at is the sales performance of your business overall, not just individual employees’ numbers. Some KPIs for sales to look out for include profitability reports, retention statistics, and close rates, among others.
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Inbound Marketing ROI
Tracking the actual return on investment from your inbound marketing practices is also vital to the overall health of your business. You need to be sure the time and money you spend on your strategies are proving tangible results. How else will you know your efforts like social media, blogging, landing pages, and other offers are effectively capturing leads and converting them into customers?
By checking your inbound ROI routinely, you’ll also have a deeper understanding when your strategy isn’t working, allowing you to A/B test different variables to hone in on the problem. You can also use the money that isn’t producing results on newer strategies and activities that you might not have tried from the start.
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Organic Website Traffic
Your website is one of, if not the, most important pieces in your inbound marketing results. It acts as the central hub for your services, so keeping your organic traffic KPI healthy is something you should focus on in 2015—and you can do that by tracking organic traffic.
That doesn’t mean you should sit in front of your computer screen all day while hitting the refresh button. You need to check on your entire site’s search traffic, and use your SEO rankings and click-through rates to determine which portions of your website need the most work, and where visitors are falling off. It’s also good to know who, why, and how these prospects were directed to your site.
They say you can't manage what you don't measure, and if you're hoping to have a kickass 2015, you'll need a strategy in place to get you there. It's one of the reasons inbound marketing exists today, as marketing strategies can finally prove their worth through analytics and factors like KPIs. All you have to do is track!