Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) should be a vital piece of your public relations campaign’s toolkit. They are metrics used to measure how your campaign is performing. It can give you a snapshot of where you currently stand. In what areas does your campaign excel? What areas need improvement? Are the results in line with what you anticipated? If you’re tracking the right metrics, this data can be used to improve the return on investment (ROI) from your PR campaigns. Data can make all the difference between a successful campaign and one that goes down in flames. However, first you’ll need to know exactly which KPI’s you should be tracking. While there are many that are useful, we’d like to focus on the following four.
Cost-per-lead
It’s important to ascertain the efficiency of your campaign. How much did it cost your business to garner those sales leads? How much is it costing you to secure a customer through inbound marketing vs outbound marketing? Identifying that number can help you create better strategies in the future. If you’re spending too much to get potential sales, then your ROI is being affected.
Sales analytics
The primary function of any campaign is to result in making money for your business. Tracking not just how much comes in, but from where and how it came in is of tantamount importance. You need to find out whether the majority of purchases are coming from online, how many are off-line, by phone, or even in an actual retail store. Keeping track of this information will allow you to tailor your marketing efforts to be more effective.
Sales qualified leads
Sales qualified leads metrics measure how many of your leads turn into clients. This information can help you track the success of your sales strategies and your sales team, if you have one. You’ll be able to see how you excel, and how your business might be struggling. This will allow you to make improvements and adjustments as you cater to your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses.
Landing page Conversion Rates
Once a potential customer lands on your site, are they making the purchase or are they leaving your site? If they aren’t sticking around, what is the issue? In reality, you only have a few seconds to make an impression on a potential customer, which means you must have engaging content. That’s why it’s so important to be able to measure your conversion rates. If you aren’t getting the results you want, you can tweak your content and see if it makes a difference.
In this day and age, information is everything. To grow your business, you need to maximize your ability to collect data and properly use it to improve your PR and rack up leads and sales. KPI’s provide a great way of measuring your ROI. The best part is that there are media analytics tools that can do the work for you. Companies like Isentia can provide those analytics, and guide you to making the right choices to get the most out of your campaigns.
Written by Elizabeth Victor
Picture Credit / Isentia
