Online marketing: the KPIs you absolutely need to know

In online marketing, metrics are collected through web analytics and tracking. A lot of data is produced, but not all of it is relevant for all projects.

Online marketing: use KPIs adapted to your personal objectives

The first question to ask yourself before using KPIs (Key Performance Indicatorsor key performance indicators) for an online marketing campaign concerns their purpose. These indicators are primarily used to measure the success or effectiveness of objectives set in advance. The English term Key Performance Indicator therefore designates a performance indicator, a tool for evaluating the progress and success of a strategy.

To use them wisely, any marketing team must define its own objectives, in consultation with other departments such as sales or customer service. There are four main types of indicators.

• Branding and brand image: Anyone who wants to raise awareness for their business and build or strengthen a brand generally monitors the number of visitors to their website and social media, stays alert for positive mentions, and especially seeks to generate organic traffic around brand-related terms.
• Leads: A lead is a qualified prospect, particularly valuable for products requiring significant support and a long decision process. Lead generation activities include contact forms, registrations or downloads, all actions by which a potential customer shows their interest and leaves their contact details.
• Sales: Every E-commerce business aims to increase its sales. Apart from the number of orders, it is relevant to know where the customers come from.
• Commitment : We call engagement any action and interaction of a user, linked to the brand. Many KPIs are relevant for such an analysis. In particular, it is indicators based on social networks that give us this type of information relating to the social context in which a company is located and what its target audience looks like.

Online marketing: overview of key performance indicators

After having defined your objectives or sub-objectives, you should select from the key performance indicators presented below those which best correspond to the goal pursued. We mainly distinguish the primary and secondary indicators. To this are added the indicators linked to social networks. For every other area of ​​marketing, such as E-commerce, search engine optimization or newsletter marketing, there are also specific indicators.

The primary indicators of online marketing

The primary indicators in online marketing are directly linked to the objectives and are above all transaction driven. They make it possible to assess the profitability of the actions implemented. For the balance sheet, they constitute the most important indicators and are decisive for the success of any campaign.

• Number of conversions: Depending on the business model and objectives, conversions may correspond to sales, email contacts, downloads or registrations.
• Conversion rate: The conversion rate describes the relationship between clicks or visits and the number of conversions achieved. It shows how many visitors performed the desired action.
• CPA: This indicator measures the cost per objective or per action. We also talk about cost per order (CPO) or cost per lead (CPL).
• KING : the KING (Return on Investment) describes the ratio of profit to invested capital, making it the most important economic indicator for marketers. It shows whether marketing actions are profitable.
• ROAS: the ROAS (Return on Advertising Spending) indicates the ratio between the marketing budget invested and the turnover generated. It highlights the effectiveness of a campaign.

Secondary indicators of online marketing

Secondary indicators are not directly linked to the objectives mentioned above. They mainly concern theinformation and communication and provide information on the purchasing process as well as the user journey. In addition, they make it possible to identify obstacles or weaknesses in terms of ergonomics.

• Visitors: Visitor count is one of the simplest and most fundamental online marketing metrics in web analytics. The effect of the advertising measures implemented is not only reflected in turnover, but also in traffic.
• Unique visitors: unique visits indicates the number of visitors deduplicated over a given period. The measurement generally relies on browser/device identifiers (cookies, IDs), the IP address alone being insufficient and often anonymized. For example, if you access the same web page five times during a specific period, these five visits are counted as one unique visit.
• Returning visitors: the total number of visitors is not enough to assess the attractiveness of a website. The volume of returning visitors is also a relevant indicator. A high rate of returning visitors reflects user loyalty and trust, as well as the quality and relevance of the content offered. Be careful, however: if this rate is disproportionate to the total number of visitors, it may be necessary to target more potential new customers.
• Page views: If you want to measure visitor activity on a web page, this metric is relevant. It indicates the number of times a page is loaded by the same visitor. A high number of impressions reflects high engagement, while too low a value suggests the need to add more internal links or incentives to view other content.
• Bounce rate: the bounce rate, or bounce rate in English, corresponds to the proportion of visitors who leave the site after having viewed only one page. A high bounce rate may indicate that visitors did not find what they were looking for, or that the site has usability or attractiveness issues.
• Visiting time: This metric measures average session duration (or average time spent on page). It is a good indicator of user engagement and content quality. If visitors leave the page after only a few seconds, optimization is necessary.
• CTR: THE Click-Through-Rate (CTR), or click-through rate, generally applies to advertising media such as Google Ads campaigns or newsletters. It measures the attractiveness of an advertisement or message by indicating the frequency of clicks it generates.

Indicators for social networks

On social networks, large quantities of data are analyzed by marketing teams to take stock of activity, this is what we call network monitoring. The indicators here are mainly linked to interactions. There are a multitude of KPIs in the areas of measuring reach, impression, engagement and social influence. Here is a list of the main indicators:

• Social networks and virality: the virality of marketing campaigns, which is also associated with viral marketing, can be measured using social network management tools. These tools make it easier to monitor your brand or products on social networks. All mentions of a company, brand or product are summarized and transformed into a KPI.
• Subscriptions to feeds and newsletters: In the field of email marketing, there are specific tools and indicators to measure the success of campaigns. However, as new newsletter subscribers often come from other marketing activities and mainly from the website, their number is also an important indicator for evaluating on-site performance. Subscribers to emails and RSS feeds reflect customer loyalty and represent an essential lever for retargeting.
• Social media contacts: the number of contacts is a raw quantitative indicator that provides information on the potential and reach of marketing campaigns on social networks; it does not, on its own, authorize qualitative inferences. Thousands of likes are worthless if users don't actually interact (clicks, comments, shares). Effective engagement is the main source of campaign success.
• Number of shares/retweets, replies, posts, comments and likes: the volume of these reactions allows us to assess engagement and, with the right tools, analyze the tone (sentiment) and context of mentions. In addition to measuring activity, these indicators therefore offer useful qualitative signals.
• Scope and views: the scope (reach) or the number of views indicates above all how many people have potentially seen a publication, making it a purely quantitative indicator. It gives an idea of ​​the visibility of a campaign, but provides little information on its real effectiveness. Without additional interactions, the scope remains superficial. Only when views translate into clicks, comments or shares does reach reveal its true value to the success of a campaign.

Online marketing: analysis and evaluation of KPIS

For a KPI to be realistically evaluated, it must be observed over a sufficiently long period of time. This is the only way to highlight developments, trends, subscriber losses, etc. In addition, weekly rhythm differences and seasonal variations are often neglected. An indicator also always remains dependent on the economic model concerned.

Example in the field of E-commerce: an online store that sells small items will not use the same bases for evaluating the click-through rate (CTR) or the conversion rate as a store offering high-value products. In B2B, other parameters come into play, because a small number of conversions can already generate a good return on investment (ROI). What is important above all is to define precise objectives to work effectively with KPIs. The context specific to your sector or department also influences these indicators and must be taken into account.