Digital marketing has advanced to the point that marketers can collect, granulate and analyze all sorts of data and key performance indicators (KPIs) on marketing campaigns. This is great—fantastic, even—but it’s also problematic. Every campaign has different objectives, and therefore different measures of success. With so much data to consider, it’s easy to focus on key “performance” indicators that don’t actually reflect a campaign’s true performance. It’s like counting the number of emails opened, as opposed to the ROI on the actual promotion.

In order to identify the right KPIs for a campaign, you need to do 3 things:

1. Know the why

Running a campaign is all well and good, but why are you running it? The answer to this question will help determine the KPIs you should be looking at. If you’re trying to build thought leadership, then you should be counting whitepaper downloads and repeat blog visits.

2. Define the CTAs

This is similar to the first point but different in that you’re defining what you want the customer to do. Do you want them to spread your blog articles to their network? If so, track the number of shares and tweets. Do you want to initiate dialog? Track the number and quality of comments.

3. Know the tools

The beauty of marketing in the modern age is that companies are always building new ways to track and report on customer behavior. A/B tests tell you which versions of your website perform better. Heat maps tell you where customers are looking on your site. As new technologies become available, you may discover new KPIs that can change your entire marketing approach.

Now that you’ve discovered some KPI tips, you can gauge the effectiveness of various marketing strategies, discontinue ineffective ones and expand on those that get traction—which will lead to increases in your most important KPI and that other favorite acronym: your ROI.

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