The most valuable metrics are the ones that impact the bottom line. The right numbers shape the future of your business by showing where to focus, how to improve, and when to adjust.
Choosing which metrics to track isn’t always easy. Marketing performance indicators must be set before meaningful progress can happen.
For a campaign to prove its viability, it needs data specific to its business’s purpose and goals. Clear measurement starts with understanding the language of performance. Metrics, KPIs, and goals may sound similar, but each plays a different role in shaping strategy.
Metric: A metric is essentially any signal that can be tracked. It’s an objective system of measurement, which means that you might have an entire dashboard of metrics that you’ve set up to be tracked. But dashboards only serve as directionless numbers without goals and KPI.
KPI: KPIs (key performance indicators; often called marketing performance indicators) are the metrics that you’ve decided to use in tracking how efficiently your business is meeting its objectives. It’s a little tricky to get down the difference, but just remember that while all KPIs are metrics, not all metrics are KPIs.
Goal: A goal is a metric-driven objective, defined by a clear timetable and tactics, that you are trying to reach. The best goals are SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-bound). Goals set a bar for the future of certain KPIs that you then strive to achieve. Goals should move your marketing department and business forward.
Let’s put them together. For example, you may decide that next quarter your business should work to earn more site conversions via organic traffic. Your KPI will be organic traffic. Supporting metrics might include keyword rankings and landing page conversion rates. Finally, your goal could be to reach 100 conversions via organic traffic.
The metrics that you choose for your KPIs will determine what your business will achieve. Keep in mind that there’s no comprehensive list of metrics that you “must be tracking” that will work for every business. The following is a list of metrics we’ve compiled from our own experience at 97th Floor for you to consider as you develop your individualized marketing strategy.
Revenue is something every marketing leader should have in their sight. Of course, tracking this is sometimes easier said than done. A good marketing leader will make every effort to get good data that associates revenue with your various efforts. If done correctly, all other metrics will fall under this single metric.
Conversions are the closest metric to revenue that you can track. What conversions look like varies based on the business. For an e-commerce site, that could be a checkout; for a B2B site, it could be a lead or closed deal. Marketers need to ensure that the conversions they track have monetary attachments. For e-commerce businesses, that can be quite easy; however, B2B companies that work through leads with a sales team will need to be intentional about gathering data and insight from marketing and sales to assign values to things like leads, MQLs, and SQLs.
While knowing the amount of conversions your site brings in is important, knowing the rate at which your site converts traffic to conversions is critical. Paying attention to historical and trending conversion rates will help you know where to focus your attention.
For example, if you see that one month shows a conversion rate that is only 50% of the month prior, you might dig further and see that was the month you launched a new ad campaign. This would tell you that this ad campaign likely wasn’t fruitful.
The close rate is the rate at which leads are closed into actual business and revenue. This metric can be useful in judging both sales and marketing team performance. Lower close rates could mean that the sales team needs additional training, or that the marketing department isn’t providing quality leads. Tracking the close rate will help keep both sales and marketing professionals accountable.
This metric is exclusively for businesses that are running paid ads across the web. Most major advertising platforms (i.e., Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn) have snippets of code called pixels that you can put directly on your site that allow the ad platform and advertisers to track the ad’s performance — including conversions that take place on your site. When ad spend is coupled with conversion data (that has an assigned marketing value) you’ll be able to see the rate of return on your ad spend.
CPL is the total cost to acquire a lead. This is typically used as a long-term benchmark, even though this number may change. For example, a business may find that it costs an average of $42 to acquire a lead over the past year. Assuming budgets have stayed the same, this business can assume that any figure under $42/per lead is a good investment.
As its name implies, CLV is the expected return during the life of an average customer. Marketing leaders at SaaS organizations will benefit the most from this metric. It’s powerful because it can encompass smaller metrics like customer retention rate, customer add-ons, and average length of customer retention. This metric is especially powerful when filtered across a qualifier.
Virtually all businesses utilize some kind of website for their marketing efforts. Knowing how many people visit the site in a given time is essential to knowing the impact of your online marketing efforts. Many metrics could be even more specific than total traffic, such as page visits, sessions, and unique visitors. And, while total traffic might not be incredibly insightful by itself, it’s critical in keeping other traffic-related metrics in context.
There are many traffic sources you can measure, likes ad channels, referrals, social, direct, and organic. Many businesses will benefit from measuring many of these channels. However, organic will make sense for virtually all businesses.
Organic search accounts for over 50% of all web traffic, and unlike other channels, SEO has the potential to attract customers at every stage of the funnel. This could include top funnel conversions like email capture or lead capture, or bottom funnel conversions like demo requests or purchases.
Blogging has proven its worth in the business world, as the most recent numbers say that businesses that blog regularly earn 67% more leads. It has pulled ahead as one of the best ways to participate in both SEO and content marketing. Content will draw users to your site and provide you with unique opportunities to meet their needs. Not to mention the tremendous work that a blog can have on your SEO strategy.
In addition to net blog traffic, consider tracking blog-specific conversions. Conversions on a blog are generally micro conversions, such as newsletter subscriptions, lead magnet downloads, or landing page visits. However, these contacts often move farther along the funnel as they are delighted with your brand and content, and can often turn into leads.
Subscribers are the highest top funnel contacts. They are the ones who know about your business and have opted in to hear more from you. Often, this looks like signing up to be notified of new blog posts or receive a newsletter. These contacts may or may not move farther down the funnel, but that’s okay. Growing your subscribers means growing your audience, which allows you to amplify your content and reach even more new contacts.
Leads are contacts in your database that have indicated some signal that they are willing to learn more than surface-level information about your company, and they’ve given you information to make that happen. Examples of this might come from a PDF lead magnet or a free trial signup.
Are you trying to increase trial sign-ups, improve customer retention, or get more traffic to your website? What are your targeted marketing performance indicators?
MQLs are leads that the marketing team has determined are more qualified than a standard lead based on their action. MQL structure might vary depending on the company, but generally, they are defined as the contacts that have shown enough interest to qualify them as ready to talk to sales. Marketing determines readiness based on either lead scoring or the contacts themselves requesting to talk with sales via a form on the marketing page.
An MQL becomes an SQL after the sales team has determined this lead’s qualifications. Many organizations have their own iterations on this, but SQLs are generally MQLs that are confirmed promising enough to be pursued by the sales team. Sales then takes the reins in nurturing them and aiding them in their journey to becoming a customer.
Email has one of the most positive ROIs of any channel. It’s believed to be as high as $42 for every $1 spent. It’s also one of the most used channels today, despite years of naysayers predicting its demise. This metric measures the effectiveness of subject lines in real-time. However, this metric also tracks much deeper issues, like a company’s reputation. If you have a history of providing good content within your emails, you’ll have a higher open rate.
Email click-through rates (and net clicks) measure the effectiveness of the content inside your email. Having a contact open and read your email is great, but having them follow through on what you asked them to do is even more important. Emails lose much of their usefulness unless contacts take action, so measuring click-through rate is worthwhile.
Social is a set of micro metrics (likes, shares, comments, social traffic, impressions, etc.) from which you can choose what makes sense to track for your company. Some businesses will choose not to intentionally track any of these metrics and put social media on the back burner. For some, social metrics will be a large part of their overall marketing strategy.
The social channels businesses focus on will also largely depend on the company.
Clients and managers may approach agencies and employees with incredibly bad KPIs in mind. KPIs like “increase rankings” or “get more followers” are bound to leave your site barren. Vanity metrics like followers, impressions, or raw traffic can be misleading if they don’t tie back to conversions or revenue.
Healthy KPIs are the ones that connect marketing activity to real business outcomes. Instead of tracking numbers for their own sake, make sure your chosen indicators tie back to revenue, growth, or long-term customer value. When KPIs are aligned with profit, they provide a clear picture of whether your marketing is moving the business forward.
The success of storytelling strategies can be measured through marketing performance indicators like engagement rates, time spent on page, click-through rates, and conversions.
We’ll close out with a story. In the 1950s, the young biologist Allan Savory was working to set up natural parks in Zambia, Africa. National parks teeming with wildlife are much more appealing than parks devoid of animals; therefore, Savory’s first plan of action was to move the indigenous hunters from the land to boost the wildlife population.
Unfortunately, shortly after Savory removed the hunters, the terrain began to deteriorate and enter a period of desertification. The land was growing barren and becoming increasingly unable to support the growing herds of grazing animals.
As things began to get worse, Savory turned to the data. He discovered that the desertification problem stemmed mainly from the large number of elephants growing unchecked. According to Savory’s findings, the only way out was the extermination of thousands of elephants.
Convincing the Central African politicians to slaughter herds of elephants was no small task. The Zambian government called in a small task force to check and re-check Savory’s numbers. Finally, the team concluded that Savory was correct and his calculations were sound. Shortly thereafter, Savory (aided by the Zambian government) began shooting thousands of elephants, measuring their success based on how many elephants they killed. Fueled by the self-established metric of elephant population, Savory and his team killed over 40,000 elephants in an attempt to save the land. In the end, the land degradation intensified, and Savory had to live with what he still calls the “saddest and the greatest blunder of [his] life.”
The lesson for marketers? Choosing the wrong marketing key performance indicators can have devastating long-term consequences. Just like Savory’s faulty KPI (elephant population), selecting vanity or misaligned KPIs can lead businesses down destructive paths.
We use a combination of analytics tools and marketing performance indic ators (KPIs) to measure the success of your digital marketing campaigns.
Allan Savory’s tragic pursuit of an ineffective KPI has caused him to spend the rest of his life trying to correct his theory. When looking for success in digital marketing, let’s not make the mistake of pursuing unhealthy KPIs only to end up spending much more time cleaning up our mistakes.
With the right marketing performance indicators in place, you’re ready to design a marketing strategy backed by insight, select marketing KPIs that drive results, and make smarter decisions.
At 97th Floor, we help brands focus on the right marketing performance indicators so their strategies lead to real growth. Our team specializes in aligning KPIs with revenue goals, building dashboards that provide clarity, and creating campaigns that move the needle.
Every brand is unique. Success comes from identifying the signals that matter most to your business and using them to guide your marketing forward.
Marketing performance indicators are measurable signals that show how effective your campaigns are. They help you understand whether your efforts are driving growth, revenue, and long-term customer value.
Marketing metrics are any numbers you can track, like clicks, impressions, or page views. Marketing performance indicators are the select metrics you focus on because they tie directly to business goals like conversions or revenue.
A good marketing KPI is specific, measurable, and tied to outcomes that matter—like profit, customer lifetime value, or pipeline growth. Unlike vanity metrics, strong KPIs give you insight into the health of your business.
Most businesses see the best results by focusing on 3–5 core KPIs, but it entirely depends on your circumstances and goals. In general, tracking too many metrics at once can create confusion, while a smaller set of marketing KPIs helps teams stay aligned and strategic.
Marketing key performance indicators provide clarity. They show whether your campaigns are achieving the results that matter most and keep your team focused on measurable business impact instead of surface-level activity.
While every business is unique, most should track revenue, conversions, cost per lead, and customer lifetime value. These marketing metrics connect marketing activity to growth and provide a clear picture of return on investment.
