Top 21 Digital Marketing Metrics and KPIs to Measure in 2024

Web analytics loses its meaning without a competent and timely analysis of the main KPIs and metrics of digital marketing. We’ll go through a few interesting digital marketing formulas that will help you know your marketing flow better. It’s hard to believe, but people may be wrong when assessing their everyday processes.

Let's take a look at some key marketing metrics and revisit them in a month. You might uncover insights about your practices that you've never noticed before.

Note: This list of the most important and used internet marketing metrics and digital marketing KPIs was first published in 2018 and updated with new context in October 2024 to suit the current state of marketing analytics metrics and trends.

What are marketing metrics? Marketing metrics are specific performance data points that marketers utilize to monitor, record, and measure the success of their marketing plans and campaigns over time. Selecting the right metrics that align with campaign goals is crucial, as these metrics can vary across different platforms.

Digital marketing metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are ways to measure how well your online marketing efforts are working. Think of them like scorecards for your digital marketing strategies.

• Metrics are the specific data points you track, like website visits, social media followers, or email open rates.
• KPIs, on the other hand, are the most important metrics that tell you whether you’re achieving your marketing goals.

For example, if your goal for marketing channels is to increase sales, the KPI might be the number of online purchases. These metrics and KPIs help you understand what’s effective in your digital marketing and what needs improvement, so you can make better decisions and boost your online success.

The fundamental difference is that a metric is simply something you can count, like actions or events – for example, pressing the "Leave a message" button. A metric is just a number, and its interpretation is up to you.

In contrast, a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) provides insights. Digital marketing KPIs usually have standard values and offer meaningful information about your business when you compare the actual value to the average. For instance, email marketing has typical open rates across different industries. It's important to review these benchmarks before setting your own targets.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are examples of key marketing metrics and KPIs. MQLs are potential customers who have shown interest in a company's offerings through marketing interactions, indicating their likelihood of converting.

Tracking MQLs helps assess marketing teams' effectiveness, and their transition to Sales Qualified Leads, which are leads vetted and deemed likely to convert into customers, is crucial. Monitoring these metrics helps understand the alignment between marketing and sales efforts.

You can’t say for sure if your business is performing well unless you look at the numbers. Marketing initiatives are crucial as they are measurable values that are assessed through various key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, which help validate the effectiveness of marketing efforts to stakeholders.

Here are a few reasons why keeping an eye on these digital marketing key metrics and KPIs is so important.

1. Measuring Performance: Metrics and KPIs in digital marketing provide a way to assess the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts, helping you understand what’s working and what needs improvement.
2. Data-Informed Decision-Making: These metrics and digital marketing KPIs enable data-driven decision-making by providing actionable insights that guide resource allocation and strategy adjustments.
3. Goal Tracking: Digital marketing key metrics help you track progress toward your marketing goals, ensuring that you’re on the right path to achieving them.
4. ROI Assessment: These metrics allow you to determine if your marketing investments are delivering a positive return on investment, a crucial consideration for businesses.
5. Continuous Improvement: Regularly monitoring metrics promotes a culture of continuous improvement, helping you optimize your marketing strategies over time for better results.

Your focus should be on data that accurately reflects your digital marketing performance. Depending on your industry and goals, there are various KPIs and metrics you should monitor. Today, we'll explore some of the most common ones that apply to most businesses.

Not sure what metrics you need and how to calculate them? We’ve prepared a selection of dashboards that will be useful to every marketer. Just select a template, connect your data, and get a ready-made report on advertising campaigns, sales funnel, ROPO, RFM, LTV, cohort analysis, and more.

What’s going on with my sales? Is my website effective enough? What’s been the efficiency of our content marketing efforts in the last few months? All of these questions can be answered by marketing and sales performance metrics and KPIs.

These metrics are crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, helping to align marketing strategies with business goals. While marketing and sales are different departments, they are very closely linked. Following are the KPIs and digital metrics that can give a clear picture of your own business performance.

This digital marketing performance metric indicates the total number of visitors to your website over a specific period, providing an overview of your site’s reach and audience size. Tracking website traffic is crucial as it serves as a fundamental metric in digital marketing, helping to evaluate marketing effectiveness and guide strategic decisions.

The bounce rate is calculated as the number of single-page visits (where a user views only one page) divided by the total number of visits. The formula is:

It’s typically expressed as a percentage.

To calculate the average session duration, sum up the total time spent by all visitors on your website during a specific period and divide it by the total number of sessions. The formula is:

These formulas can be applied using web analytics tools like Google Analytics 4, which automatically tracks and calculates these metrics for your website.

SEO metrics are one of the most crucial metrics in digital marketing for evaluating the performance of your website in search engine results and understanding how effectively your SEO efforts are driving organic traffic and improving your website's authority.

• Organic Traffic: Organic traffic refers to the number of visitors who arrive at your website through unpaid (organic) search engine results. It indicates the visibility and relevance of your website in search engine rankings.
• Keyword Rankings: Keyword rankings track the position of your website's pages in search engine results for specific keywords or phrases. Improved rankings for relevant keywords can lead to increased organic traffic.
• Backlinks: Backlinks measure the number and quality of other websites linking to your site. High-quality backlinks from authoritative sources can enhance your website's credibility and improve its search engine rankings.

Domain Authority is a marketing metric developed by Moz that assesses the overall authority and trustworthiness of your website in search engine algorithms. A higher Domain Authority score is generally associated with better search engine rankings.

Conversion rate is one of the simplest yet crucial digital marketing metrics. It represents the percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, downloading an app, or submitting a contact form.

You can find the number of conversions and total number of visitors in Google Analytics 4.'

Once you've set your goals, you can see this visualization on the Reports —> Engagement —> Conversion page.

Clicks can often lead to purchases. The click-through rate (CTR) measures the percentage of users who click on a link compared to the total number of users who see it.

For instance, in a Google Ads campaign, if your ad is displayed 1,000 times and receives 100 clicks, your CTR would be 10%. This means that 10% of the users who saw your ad took the desired action of clicking on it.

A high CTR indicates that your ad is resonating with your target audience, driving more traffic to your website, and is a valuable KPI to monitor to optimize ad campaigns for better performance.

Cost per click (CPC) is a key performance metric in digital marketing that indicates whether you can save money on paid ads. It measures how much you pay each time your ad is clicked, helping you assess the cost-effectiveness of your ad campaign.

Google Ads provides this information when calculating the CPC for your keyword auctions. You can seamlessly integrate your Google Ads with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and further connect other ad services using OWOX BI.

Cost per action (CPA) is a digital advertising metric that reflects the cost of achieving a specific desired action. It also helps evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing funnel. The desired action is defined by you—it could be anything from signing up for a newsletter to requesting a callback, or any other goal you set.

This straightforward metric forms the foundation of CPA marketing, where you pay for each conversion generated by an affiliate. However, a potential drawback of this approach is that unethical affiliates may attempt to deceive you with fake traffic.

This KPI is even more critical than the previous one! Cost per lead (CPL) is similar to cost per action, but instead of paying for a specific action, you pay for the contact information of a marketing-qualified lead—someone who is potentially interested in your offer.

To calculate this metric, sum up all your ad expenses leading to actions like gated content registrations, then divide the total by the number of leads acquired. This will help you determine whether your lead acquisition efforts are within budget or if you're overspending. Remember, a lead is only halfway to becoming a client and hasn't yet become a loyal follower.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is a vital digital advertising performance metric that calculates the average cost a business incurs to acquire a new customer. It provides insights into the efficiency and sustainability of marketing and sales strategies.

The marketing team plays a crucial role in managing CAC by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and maintaining effective communication to improve decision-making and overall performance metrics.

To calculate CAC, you add up all the costs associated with acquiring customers, including marketing expenses, advertising costs, and sales team salaries, and then divide that total by the number of new customers acquired during a specific period.

For example, if you spent $10,000 on marketing and sales efforts in a month and acquired 100 new paying customers, your CAC would be $100.

Monitoring CAC helps businesses understand the financial viability of their customer acquisition strategies. A lower CAC is generally more desirable, as it means you are acquiring customers at a lower cost, potentially leading to better profitability. However, what constitutes a “good” CAC for one business may not be the same for another.

This metric represents the percentage of inbound calls that are disconnected before reaching a call center agent, or the percentage of abandoned shopping carts in the retail industry.

For call centers:

For retail businesses or e-commerce:

A high abandonment rate can be a concern for online retailers, as it indicates that a significant portion of potential customers are leaving the purchase process without converting.

To address this, businesses often analyze the reasons for cart abandonment, such as unexpected costs, complicated checkout processes, or security concerns, and implement strategies to reduce this rate. Lowering the abandonment rate can lead to increased sales and revenue in e-commerce.

In Google Analytics 4, you can view the positive aspects of the abandonment rate after setting a conversion goal for the shopping cart page. It's best practice to monitor the abandonment rate over time, comparing it to industry averages and different audience cohorts.

Clear and straightforward, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is one of the most crucial metrics for measuring ad performance in digital marketing. It represents the revenue your business earns for every dollar spent on advertising. By using ROAS as the primary metric for each digital marketing campaign, you'll be able to distinguish between effective marketing spend and less successful efforts.

ROI is the crown jewel of KPIs in digital marketing, even recognized by those unfamiliar with analytics! Return on investment is a performance metric used to assess the effectiveness of a specific investment.

You can calculate ROI for nearly any process. Typically, ROI is standardized and should be above 100%. Before starting your calculations, make sure to find benchmarks relevant to your situation. For more details, check out our article on ROI.

Average Revenue Per Account/User/Customer (ARPA, ARPU, or ARPC) is a key financial metric used to measure the average amount of revenue generated by each account, user, or customer over a specific period, usually monthly or annually.

This metric is particularly important for subscription-based businesses, software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, and other subscription models, as it helps assess the financial health and sustainability of the customer base.

Average revenue per account (or per user or customer) shows you the average revenue from an account.

Before raising prices, monitor your ARPA (Average Revenue Per Account). Check it again afterward. If the price increase was a mistake, it will be reflected in a lower ARPA — unless your total monthly recurring revenue rises, the ARPA will decline.

This financial metric indicates how long it will take to recoup the marketing costs spent on acquiring a customer. The time to payback CAC is especially crucial for subscription-based businesses and those with recurring revenue models, making it particularly relevant for SaaS companies with long sales funnels.

Monitoring Time to Payback CAC is crucial because it helps businesses assess the efficiency of their customer acquisition strategies and the sustainability of their revenue streams. A shorter payback period indicates a faster return on investment for acquiring new customers, which can be vital for business growth and financial stability.

MRR, or monthly recurring revenue, is a key metric for the recurring revenue components of a subscription business. It helps companies forecast revenue and adjust their sales strategies accordingly.

MRR as a KPI is often more closely associated with customer journey than with finance, but marketing and sales contribute to MRR growth by acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones.

The churn rate is the percentage of customers or subscribers who discontinue their subscriptions during a given period.

Churn metrics are vital for understanding customer retention and identifying where marketing, social media engagement, and sales efforts may need improvement to reduce customer attrition.

Also referred to as the MRR churn rate, where MRR stands for monthly recurring revenue, revenue churn measures the loss in revenue due to customers canceling or downgrading their subscriptions.

This metric assesses the company's market presence relative to competitors. While marketing often plays a significant role in market share growth, sales strategies can also influence it.

This metric shows how big your share of the market is.

You can calculate the percentage of the market's sales you capture and set appropriate growth goals. The main challenge lies in obtaining comprehensive data on overall market sales.

Share of Wallet is a digital marketing measurement KPI that shows the portion of a customer's spending going to your company compared to competitors. Both marketing and sales can impact this metric by providing value and retaining customers. You can get this data through marketing investigations or focus groups. Focus groups are a tough but interesting way to collect data because your clients will tell you insights that you could never have imagined! Just take the first step to meet them.

Suppose Ann spent $20 on your handmade cosmetics this month, out of a total of $120 spent on cosmetics overall. Your Share of Wallet (SOW) would be 20/120 × 100% = 16.6%. Not quite as high as anticipated!

How long do customers continue to return to your business, or do they make a purchase and then move on? Acquiring new customers is far more costly than re-engaging existing ones. The customer retention rate, also known as reverse churn, reflects this ongoing relationship.

A perfect customer retention rate is 100%, indicating strong customer loyalty and long-term engagement. However, if you notice a decline, it’s important to focus more on your customer service. Maintaining a high retention rate is crucial for your digital marketing success.

Customer lifetime value can be either historical, representing the total profits from all purchases a customer has made, or predictive, estimating the total revenue your business anticipates from the ongoing relationship with that customer.

LTV as a metric is crucial for guiding marketing and sales efforts, helping businesses make informed decisions about customer acquisition, retention, and customer loyalty programs. It highlights the importance of nurturing long-term customer relationships for sustainable revenue growth.

The metrics and KPIs mentioned in this article are just the surface of what you can measure in digital marketing. However, understanding these online marketing metrics is essential to avoid being caught off guard, much like the crew of the Titanic, when you encounter challenges in the vast ocean of business.

Analyze your marketing efficiency, find the growth areas, and increase ROI.

Yes, it's a lot of metrics and KPIs to measure, and multiple dashboards can be hard to deal with. At OWOX BI, you can integrate all your marketing efforts in one place, and look at the important digital marketing metrics and KPIs in one dashboard.