Marketing and content strategy experts love to talk about business metrics. They’ll tell you that you need them to understand how you stack up against the competition (true) and where you are in relation to reaching your business goals (also true). That’s all well and good, but one serious question remains: Where do you go to find business metrics?
Understanding Business Metrics
First, let’s review what business metrics are. You may also see metrics referred to as key performance indicators, or KPI, and the name certainly fits. When you want to find a quantifiable way to track data and assess the success of a certain marketing action or business process, you need metrics. No educated guesses, gut instinct or “stabs in the dark” here. Just cold, hard data that speaks the truth, whether you want to hear it or not.
Depending on the type of business you have, your most important metrics could include:
- Return on investment
- Sales targets
- Customer acquisition costs
- Net profit margin percentage
- Sales growth
- Lead conversion rate
- Average purchase value
- Lead-to-opportunity ratio
- Cost-per-click
- Landing page conversion rates
- Engagement Rates
- Bounce rates
- Employee turnover rates
- Net promoter score
- Customer churn
- First call resolution
Using an Analytics Program or Similar Platform
One of the easiest ways to get your business metrics is to use a program designed expressly for that purpose. Depending on your niche and business infrastructure, you may be able to download a tracking and analysis program and use it independently, or it may be as easy as using an app that plugs into a platform you already use. For example, e-commerce businesses can use Shopify’s own built-in analytics setup to gauge the health of certain initiatives.
Build Your Own KPI-Tracking Spreadsheet
If you’re the DIY type, you can try building your own tracking and analysis utility in spreadsheet format. The advantage to this is that you can include all the metrics you need and exclude everything else. This lessens the ambient noise so you can focus solely on the data you care about most. The disadvantage is that this approach can be incredibly time consuming — remember, not only will you need to build the utility (or have it built for you), you’ll also have to source raw data and use formulas to calculate and analyze the information you dig up.
Partner With KPI Experts
Analytics aren’t the difficult to read, but they can be tricky to interpret. When you join forces with a marketing agency or other similar entity that specializes in planning campaigns, launching marketing initiatives and tracking metrics, they’ll track down those KPIs for you. Even better, you won’t have to give metrics a second thought because those agencies are likely to already have software in place — and it’ll be pretty good software, too.
Learn more about key business performance metrics to find out how to keep tabs on your company’s day-to-day operations and stay hands on as you continue to grow.
