B2B marketers are under increasing pressure to prove the value of every effort. What worked last year might not be enough now. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are your way of understanding what’s working, what’s failing, and where to double down in your organization. KPIs don’t just measure your success, they drive it.
Discover why identifying KPIs is vital to your marcom plan, along with common metrics you can use and how to measure them.
KPIs vs. Metrics
With constantly evolving online platforms and channels, you must ensure you’re up to date on market trends and consumer behaviors. Marketing KPIs are quantifiable measures that track the progress and evaluate whether your company is meeting your SMART goals.
Metrics are the supporting data that offer context and explain the “why” behind a KPI’s movement, providing feedback on a business action or process. Metrics will focus on targets rather than goals.
Both elements are essential for comprehensive performance measurement.
(Need more details? Dive into the differences between KPIs, data and ROI.)
Understanding the Different Types of KPIs
When it comes to measuring success, not all key performance indicators are the same. While some are used to measure monthly progress against a goal, others have a longer-term focus. The one thing all KPIs have in common is that they’re tied to strategic goals. Here’s an overview of some of the most common types of KPIs.
- Strategic: Many companies track dozens of metrics yet struggle to translate strategic direction into sustained results. Strategic KPIs close that gap. These big-picture key performance indicators monitor organizational goals. Executives typically look to strategic KPIs to find out how the organization is doing at any given time, prioritize resources, manage execution, and adjust course in real time. >> Example: Return on investment (ROI)
- Operational: Clearly articulate detailed and timely information used to make daily decisions or take corrective actions on performance or a process. Operational KPIs provide a way to determine if a company is controlling costs and not wasting time, materials and labor, which is at the heart of organizational processes and efficiencies. >> Example: Cost per acquisition (CPA)
- Leading: Provides early insight and guidance into what might happen in the future. Leading KPIs help identify potential issues before they impact results, allowing you to take proactive steps to improve performance making real-time course corrections earlier in the cycle to ensure your company is on track to achieve your desired results. >> Example: Website conversion rate
- Lagging: Provides insights into past events, performance, or outcomes. These indicators are often used to assess the results and impacts of past actions, strategies, or decisions. Lagging metrics are valuable for analyzing past performance, evaluating the effectiveness of initiatives, and making retrospective assessments. >> Example: Bounce rate or search engine rankings
What KPIs Help Measure Success?
Depending on your marketing goals, you might be measuring different or multiple KPIs. A strategy session that includes your marketing, sales and executive team members is the best way to align business goals to measurable marketing actions.
Certain tactics lend themselves to certain data points and KPIs as well. Are you looking to gain more new customers or entice existing customers to purchase again? The tactics you pursue, the messaging you use and ultimately the metrics you measure will be different depending on how your company answers that question.
The more sophisticated your tools, the easier it is to capture and analyze data. Are you using a CRM like Salesforce? It will be easier to quickly find data points like number of SQLs as well as connect multiple people and multiple teams into one dashboard.
What Data Points Do You Need to Measure for Each KPI?
Many data points likely exist within each tactic and channel. Capturing all available data is important for overall benchmarking, but not all data points will be the most relevant for a true KPI.
Consider these questions when defining your KPIs for each goal:
- Do you care about all web traffic or only to a key page?
- From all sources or one specific channel?
- Or do you actually care about converting that web traffic into form fills?
- Are all those form fills weighted equally or are you looking for qualified leads?
- How many touch points are needed to turn those leads into customers?
These are examples of data points you could capture for each type of marketing KPI:
Engagement
- Web traffic and bounce rate
- CTR (click through rate)
- Likes
- Impressions
- Video views
- Key page views
- Social media followers
Conversions
- Traffic to leads
- MQL to SQL (marketing qualified lead to sales qualified lead)
- Form fills
- Email signups and unsubscribes
Cost
- CPL (cost per lead)
- CPC (cost per click)
- CPM (cost per thousand)
- ROI/ROMI (return on investment / return on marketing investment)
Turning Data into Actionable Growth
In B2B marketing, success is no longer measured by activity alone, but by measurable impact. KPIs provide the structure needed to connect marketing efforts to real business outcomes, helping you understand which strategies are driving awareness, engagement, and ultimately conversions. When KPIs are aligned with strategic goals and reviewed consistently, they become powerful tools for optimizing campaigns, improving efficiency, and demonstrating marketing efforts towards revenue. Focusing on the right KPIs will help you become better equipped to refine your strategies, adapt to changing market conditions, and drive sustainable growth.