Top Marketing KPIs Every Business Should Track
Chosen theme: Top Marketing KPIs Every Business Should Track. Welcome to a friendly, practical deep dive into the numbers that move real growth. Together we will translate metrics into momentum, share field-tested insights, and invite you to comment, subscribe, and shape our next KPI explorations.
A startup we advised chased likes for months while revenue stalled. When they focused on qualified leads, conversion rate, and payback period, growth turned sustainable within two quarters. Share a vanity metric you stopped tracking, and how refocusing changed your results.
Why KPIs Are Your Marketing North Star
Calculate CAC by dividing total acquisition spend by new customers within the same period, including media, tools, and labor. Segment by channel and campaign to expose hidden inefficiencies. Post your latest CAC trend, and we will share a relevant benchmark in our next newsletter.
Track every step from visit to lead, lead to opportunity, and opportunity to customer. Bottlenecks often appear between marketing qualified and sales accepted leads. Test messaging, forms, and offers. Try one change this week and report back your lift for community feedback.
CPL can be misleading if leads are unqualified. Define qualification clearly, including intent signals and fit criteria, then optimize to CPQL instead. When CPQL falls and conversion rises, CAC follows. Share your top qualification signals so others can learn from your process.
Engagement KPIs That Reveal Intent
CTR reflects relevance across copy, creative, and placement. Compare cohorts, not just campaigns, and normalize against impressions quality. Alerts for sudden CTR drops can save budgets. A B test one headline this week and share your winning angle with our readers.
Revenue and Efficiency KPIs
Lifetime Value, Properly Calculated
Estimate LTV using average revenue, gross margin, and churn or retention curves, not simplistic order averages. Segment by cohort and channel to spot quality differences. Aim for a healthy LTV to CAC ratio. Share your current ratio, and we will suggest actionable next steps.
Return on Ad Spend and MER
ROAS can be gamed by retargeting or branded search. Compare with Marketing Efficiency Ratio across all spend to reveal true performance. Test incrementality with holdouts. Tell us which channel surprises you most, and we will feature a mini case study next week.
Payback Period and Cash
Payback period shows how quickly marketing recovers acquisition costs. Shorter payback improves cash flow and reduces financing risk. Track by channel to throttle budgets intelligently. Start a conversation with finance and share the biggest insight it unlocked for your planning.
Retention and Loyalty KPIs
Measure both logo and revenue churn to understand quantity and value lost. Build cohort retention curves, identify risk segments, and deploy lifecycle messaging. One client cut churn by personalizing onboarding. Share one retention experiment you will try this quarter.
Attribution, Testing, and Data Quality
Create a shared taxonomy, enforce lowercase standards, and validate links before launch. Reconcile ad platform numbers with analytics and your data warehouse. Consistency prevents siloed truths. Start your taxonomy document today and tell us which fields you standardized first.