There are some business decisions that are okay to make from your gut. Does this person feel like the right hire? Should I go to this conference? Do I like this draft of my new logo? And while listening to (and trusting) your intuition can be all you need in some instances, there are others where how you feel about something isn't enough. Was my Shop Small Saturday campaign successful? Is being on Pinterest worth it? Are people reading my email newsletters? When questions like these are swirling around in your head, you need numbers to make the right decisions—specifically, you need key performance indicators (KPIs) to guide you. But what are key performance indicators? How do you know which ones to track? And where exactly do you track them? Read on for all the details you need to know and how to get started with tracking KPIs for your small business.
What are key performance indicators?
Key performance indicators are the numbers that help you track progress and success in your business. They vary depending on what you want to measure, but can include social media metrics, website traffic, number of leads, conversion rates, email engagement, and more. You can choose the KPIs you want to track across your business but some of the common ones you’ll find in marketing are:
- Monthly visitors to your website
- Total monthly page views on your website
- Your website's bounce rate
- Number of followers on social media platforms
- Your reach and/or impressions on social media platforms
- Total email list subscribers
How to pick which KPIs to track
There are two schools of thought when it comes to choosing which KPIs to track. The first is what you might call the "vanity metric" school—these are the metrics that make you feel good but don't actually give you any meaningful information about your business. For example, your total number of social media followers would be considered a vanity metric because the number of followers doesn't always have a direct impact on the size of your business. The second school of thought would be the "actionable metric" school—these are the metrics that give you insights into what's working and what isn't so you can make changes accordingly. An example of an actionable metric would be your website's bounce rate (the percentage of people who leave your site after only viewing one page).
So which school of thought should you subscribe to as a small business owner trying to do a better job with marketing? The answer is both! While it's important to focus on metrics that will give you actionable insights, it's also good to track vanity metrics so you can see your progress over time (especially because these help you understand how your brand is growing). For example, if you're trying to grow your social media following, tracking your monthly growth is a good way to see if your efforts are paying off.
How to track your KPIs
There are a few different ways you can track your KPIs. One is to use a spreadsheet—set up a sheet with all of the different metrics you want to track and then update it manually on a regular basis (we recommend monthly). This method works well if you only have a few KPIs you're tracking but can get unwieldy if you're tracking several different metrics and doesn't always make it easy to visualize how things are going. Another option is to use a marketing dashboard like Enji which is helpful because you can track and access your KPIs and organize all your marketing tasks in one place—and in a way that puts your progress front and center. This makes it easy to build it into your routine and commit to tracking your metrics every month.
The benefits of tracking KPIs
There are a few key benefits to tracking KPIs, the main one being it helps you make data-driven decisions. Instead of going with your gut or making decisions based on what you think is working, you can look at your KPIs and see what's actually working (and not). This can save you time and money because you 're not wasting resources on things that aren't moving the needle.
Another benefit of tracking KPIs is that it gives you a way to measure progress and success. This can be helpful in a few different ways—it can give you a confidence boost when you see progress being made and it can also help you identify areas where you need to make changes. For example, if you see that your website's bounce rate is high, that's an indication that you need to work on making your site more engaging. Finally, tracking KPIs can help you stay accountable to your goals. When you have specific metrics you're tracking, you're more likely to stay focused on those goals and make sure you're taking the necessary steps to achieve them.
Does help setting up your KPIs to track sound nice? When you create your small business marketing strategy in Enji, we automatically load your KPI sheet with what we think you should track—and you can edit it from there. Start your free trial to test it out today!
