Metrics and Methods for Building Marketing KPIs for Scientific, Effective Marketing

How to build effective KPIs for the Marketing department? To compete in today’s digital age, digital marketing is something businesses cannot ignore. Let’s explore with 1Office how to build Marketing KPIs effectively in a business that every manager needs to know.

>> See more:

• The most accurate KPI template for the Marketing Manager position
• KPI template for sales staff – Increase sales closing efficiency by 65%
• The most accurate KPI template for the Digital Marketing staff position

1. Why is it necessary to build KPIs for Marketing?

According to a scientific study supervised by Dr. Do Tien Long – an experienced expert in organizational restructuring and transformation, leadership capacity development, human resource management, strategic management, and corporate culture:

• Only 3% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are interested in e-commerce. They are still vague about Digital Marketing.

• Out of 56,000 SMEs, up to 90% have no concept of e-commerce in general and Digital Marketing in particular.

• While some businesses have exploited Digital Marketing channels very well, the majority of Vietnamese businesses still “lack the knowledge and implementation experience” for channels like Facebook Marketing, Google Marketing, YouTube Marketing, SMS Marketing…

This indicates that most Vietnamese businesses have started to pay attention to Digital Marketing activities but do not yet have a full awareness and understanding of the matter. This turns Digital Marketing into a “risky investment”.

2. The most effective method for building KPIs for the Marketing department

Besides tasks like budget allocation, channel distribution, and researching competitors and the market, creating a plan for managing and assigning tasks for the Marketing department is also extremely important. There are two popular models that help manage the KPI building process effectively:

2.1. Building Marketing KPIs using the Kanban method

Kanban is a term that originated from the car manufacturer Toyota. In an industrial environment, Kanban (which means “signboard” or “billboard” in Japanese) is often understood as the practice of marking cards on each product as it passes through workshops in a factory.

A personal Kanban board operates on two principles: Visualize your work. Limit your total “work in progress.” Managing the Marketing department’s KPIs with Kanban helps track the progress of each individual task as well as the overall progress of marketing campaigns.

2.2. Building Marketing KPIs using the Gantt Chart method

A Gantt chart is a type of chart often used for project management, but it is also applied to manage KPI evaluation criteria in businesses. It is one of the most popular and useful ways to present activities (tasks or events) based on a timeline.

The left side of the chart lists the activities, and along the top is the appropriate timeline. Each activity is represented by a long bar, reflecting the start date, duration, and end date. With just a glance, you can grasp:

• The names of the activities;

• When each marketing campaign starts and ends;

• How long each activity will last;

• Instances of overlapping time between activities;

• The results of each marketing campaign item.

In general, a Gantt Chart shows you what activities need to be completed and when. Thanks to its visual nature and detailed management of work result items, it is considered an effective method for managing B2B marketing KPIs today. 

3. Important Online Marketing KPI Metrics for Each Marketing Campaign

Before the digital age, measuring and controlling the effectiveness of marketing campaigns was never easy. It was difficult to know which source customers came from, the reach, the effectiveness of each stage, and so on. Today, countless tools have been and are being developed to help businesses successfully implement their Digital Marketing plans. 

To take Digital Marketing management plans from strategy to execution and make optimal use of support tools, KPI (Key Performance Indicator) metrics are indispensable.

3.1. Online Marketing KPI Metrics on Advertising Platforms

In this section, 1Office will break down Marketing Automation KPI metrics for each advertising campaign on Google Adwords and Facebook.

3.1.1. Google Adwords Advertising KPIs

Google Adwords is a service provided by Google that helps businesses and sellers introduce their products to customers in need. Your products will get the best positions on Google’s search results page, and this channel operates on a pay-per-click basis for each customer click on your ad.

Therefore, whether you run the ads yourself or hire a Google Ads service provider, you need to pay attention to the following digital KPI metrics to measure the effectiveness of the campaign: 

• What is the monthly search volume for the advertised keyword?

• What is the bid (cost) per click?

• What are the daily impressions and clicks on the ad?

• What is the ad’s position each time it is displayed?

• What is the ad’s Quality Score?

• What is the conversion rate, specifically the purchase conversion rate from ad clicks?

Measuring these metrics will help businesses easily assess the capabilities and performance of the Digital department staff, as well as determine appropriate KPI penalties and bonuses for the Marketing department.

3.1.2. Facebook Advertising KPIs

Along with Google Adwords, Facebook Ads is currently one of the most popular and effective advertising channels. By appearing multiple times on individuals’ News Feeds, users become aware of the brand and product. When a need arises, they are moved into the customer funnel. Although this is a promising channel, you need to master the following metrics if you want to avoid unsustainable growth. How to calculate Internet Marketing KPIs for Facebook:

• What is the daily budget for advertising?
• What is the daily ad impression rate?
• What is the daily like growth rate per total impressions?
• What is the engagement rate per ad message (if it’s an engagement ad)?

>> See more: 6+ comprehensive and detailed KPI employee evaluation forms for all departments in 2023

3.2. Building KPIs for a social media communication campaign

With the ability to reach and gather information from an extremely large number of people, social media has become a “fertile ground” for businesses to sell and promote their products.

3.2.1. For the Facebook social network

In Vietnam, Facebook is currently the social network with the largest number of users and visitors. To maximize the effectiveness of this social network, the aesthetic quality of avatars and cover photos for both personal accounts and Facebook Fanpages must be ensured. Additionally, you need to pay attention to the following metrics:

• What is the fan (like) growth rate per day/month?
• Do the fans belong to the business’s target customer group? (gender, age, location, language, etc.)
• What is the Fanpage’s engagement level (reach, clicks, likes, comments, shares)?
• For events on the Fanpage, how many people are aware, how many are invited, and how many participate?
• What is the number of direct orders from the Fanpage per day/month?
• What is the amount of website traffic from Facebook per day/month?
• How much of that traffic converts into customers per day/month?

3.2.2. For YouTube

Using a video platform, YouTube is considered a powerful communication channel. This is because YouTube strongly supports Online Marketing due to its attractive “easy to watch, easy to remember, easy to understand” nature and high potential for virality. The quality of a good YouTube channel is reflected not only in the thumbnail images and video content quality but also through the following metrics:

• How many people subscribe to the YouTube channel?
• How many other social networks is the YouTube channel linked to?
• What is the engagement level for each video on the YouTube channel? (number of views, likes, comments, shares).
• What is the amount of website traffic from the YouTube channel per day/month?

3.3. KPIs for Email Marketing Campaigns

Email Marketing is a proactive sales and customer care channel, suitable for most business sectors. With Email Marketing, you can easily increase your customer base, from both existing customers and those who have never heard of you.

However, to execute a successful Email Marketing campaign, you need to know how to prevent emails from going to the spam folder and must have a few measurement parameters as follows:

• Number of successfully delivered emails/total emails sent.
• Number of emails that reached the inbox, number of emails that went to spam.
• Number of unique opens (number of people who opened the email) and total opens (total number of times the email was opened) for each email sent.
• Number of people who clicked on a link in the email. 
• Number of unsubscribes.
• Number of emails forwarded to others.
• Number of website visits from email that converted into customers.

3.4. Performance Evaluation Metrics for SEO Marketing

Contrary to popular belief, the effectiveness of SEO is not simply about keyword rankings on Google. In reality, SEO is a complex process involving many tasks. It can be summarized into 3 main work segments:

• Keyword identification: equivalent to identifying market demand and target customers
• On-page SEO: Optimizing the website to better serve users and search engines
• Off-page SEO: Marketing the website to customers as well as search engines.

Thus, the Web Marketing KPIs to measure the effectiveness of each work segment will include:

• How many monthly searches does the SEO keyword have?
• How has the SEO keyword’s ranking on search engines changed compared to before SEO?
• How much website traffic comes from Google searches for the SEO keyword per day/month?
• What is the ratio of new visitors to returning visitors to the website?
• What is the number of pages viewed per visit?
• What is the average time customers spend on the website? 
• What is the purchase conversion rate?
• What is the website’s loading time?
• How has the website’s Alexa rank changed compared to before implementing SEO?
• How has the website’s PageRank score changed compared to before implementing SEO?
• What is the website’s online presence like compared to before implementing SEO (number of backlinks, quality of backlinks)?

4. Manage Marketing KPIs Effectively with 1Office Software

The coming years are not the period of the Digital Marketing boom in Vietnam, as some people mistakenly believe. That explosion has already happened and is significantly impacting the business operations of every company. Any business that fails to catch up and respond to this fluctuation will be eliminated.

To fully leverage the marketing KPI metrics presented above, a manager cannot rely solely on superficial, “surface-level” understanding for implementation but must equip themselves with all the necessary knowledge.

Building B2B Marketing KPIs is crucial for businesses that want to improve employee performance. However, many companies face difficulties in the process of creating and applying KPIs for their marketing departments.

Understanding the challenges businesses face during the digital transformation era, 1Office offers a comprehensive business management solution. It includes a suite of digital tools that help businesses standardize sales, customer care, and marketing processes, thereby improving work efficiency and saving time, costs, and other resources.

Outstanding features of 1Office’s KPI management software include:

• KPI Management Software allows businesses to manage the criteria, targets, and KPI results of employees for the month. This KPI board can be linked to the payroll to calculate salaries.
• Allows managers to set up KPI evaluation criteria as desired. Additionally, you can easily digitize all evaluation criteria, managing and storing them clearly and in detail on the software.
• The system allows for customizable formula setups to evaluate KPIs according to the manager’s preferences.
• Users can easily digitize all evaluation criteria, managing and storing them clearly and in detail on the software.
• Effectively solves the problem where a business may have multiple different KPIs each month, and an employee might even be included in several different KPI evaluation boards.
• 1Office’s KPI evaluation helps assign and manage employees’ daily tasks easily and conveniently, saving time for managers and improving employee performance.

Creating a Marketing KPI template is a necessary solution for managing and promoting business growth. 1Office hopes this article will be helpful in building and applying KPIs for your marketing campaigns. Additionally, if you are interested in a Marketing management software solution, please contact 1Office for a dedicated consultation.

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