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4 Essential Marketing KPIs Your CEO Will Care About

3 mins read

There are literally hundreds of reports that you can create to see how your inbound campaigns are doing but not all of them are super useful. Rather than digging into copious amounts of data and wasting time by analysing metrics that just don’t have enough value in 2019 onwards, here are four essential marketing KPIs your CEO will actually care about.

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This blog relates to another post we’ve published, highlighting the insightful reports you can create for your sales team to use so they can close more deals. To read more about, click here. The KPIs we’ll cover here include:

  1. Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads

  2. Traffic to Website

  3. Customers

  4. Database Metrics

1. Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads

We’re under no illusion that metrics like campaign performance, page performance and even email opt-out and open rates are really insightful. However, they’re probably not the metrics your bosses and the CEOs will be really interested in.

That’s where analysing Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) come in. This metric is perfect to show those with a more holistic view of the business as they’ll have a reduced interest in marketing - yet still need seriously impressing.

If you’re using a platform like HubSpot, you can easily see detailed reports of which sources and types of content are driving the most MQLs and SQLs, which marketing or sales activities have created them and how many are changing to SQLs at all.

You can break it down further by seeing how many MQLs you’re driving as a result of your different marketing channels. You can see which ones are the most valuable so you can keep the focus on the ones which work. Then when it comes to content, you can analyse the reports to see which type of content drives MQLs the most.

Remember, the focus should be on showing your CEOs the conversion rate of your MQLs and SQLs so they can see actual results. This metric helps everyone understand what content has an impact, rather than simply understanding which pages are viewed the most.

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2. Traffic to Website

Another effective KPI to measure and show off to your CEO is the overall website visits you get so you can see an increase or decrease in month-over-month traffic. That means analysing traffic from several sources, such as organic traffic right through to social media or even paid traffic.

Firstly, this data shows the higher-ups that your inbound campaigns are working. Secondly, this metric perfectly helps you to drive the type of audience you want to connect with in the future.

Understanding where your traffic is coming from will help you make strategic decisions, especially when it comes to the potential investment needed in different channels. Without the data to back this up, it’s unlikely that your bosses will be willing to throw more money at what you’re trying to achieve.

On the other hand, they can be left properly impressed with great results to show in regards to traffic through different means and be more willing to help when it comes to providing more resources to channels which are doing great or even investing in some of the weaker channels to get them on pace.

It’s easily achievable on a platform like HubSpot, where the sources report is very handy.

The sources report gives you an in-depth look at which channels are generating traffic to your website. Sources analyses how your customers or visitors arrived at your website in the first place to a click or conversion.

The level of detail you can go into here to analyse website traffic is something that’s sure to impress your bosses and give them impactful data they’ll care about.

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3. Customers

Although you should be analysing and showing your CEO where your sales or marketing leads are coming from, it’s just as important to understand and show where your customers are coming from as well after they make purchases.

This is where the potential customers (MQLs) have moved on to the next stage of the sales process and turned into a quality lead (SQL) before eventually making a purchase decision and becoming a customer.

Here’s where you should analyse where those customers have come from and which channels proved to be the most effective (and which content pieces turned out to be the most effective on each channel as well).

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4. Database Metrics

“How big is the database? Is it growing? Are we bringing people in? Can’t we just keep emailing them?” They’re probably going to be some of the most common questions a CEO will ask you when it comes to any database metrics. The assumption most of them have is that a bigger database is much better, but that’s definitely not the case.

Whether it’s for an effective email marketing strategy or anything else that contributes to your inbound marketing campaigns, it's better to have a smaller yet more qualified database filled with better-quality leads than a huge database which is flooded with poor-quality leads who are unresponsive.

Your CEO will be a lot happier seeing higher success rates in the form of open rates, for example, rather than figures being dragged down because of the level of unresponsiveness from thousands of your contacts.

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So, track your database, report on it by analysing conversion rates and the quality of your database. Qualify them quickly and cleanse the database just as quickly. That way, you can show your bosses much better results by being able to spot and fix errors quickly, remove contacts that don’t engage by monitoring the size of the database and send targeted and segmented emails.

When you can actually show your CEO the success rather than just explaining it, they’ll be more inclined to either continue with inbound marketing or at least jump on the bandwagon.

Find Out More About How You Can Implement Campaigns to Fuel Ambitious Growth With Digital 22

There are plenty of enterprise companies out there with CEOs who are reliant on KPIs. Although we’ve highlighted some of the essential KPIs and reports you should create and analyse, it’s obvious that there’s still a massive learning curve to get on board with.

That’s where we come in. We’re Digital 22, the largest HubSpot agency in the UK and the number one rated HubSpot agency in Europe. We’re also a Diamond tier partner, so we’re pretty good at what we do. Rather than wasting money on faceless agencies using outdated methods or trying to learn so much in such a short space of time, we can help you reach your goals by taking over the entire process.

To learn more about how we can help by managing your campaigns effectively, download your free copy of the Inbound for Enterprise eBook. It’s packed full of useful information ranging from how to do inbound on a massive level to how you can get buy-in.

Grab your free copy by hitting the link below.