Why It’s Time to Ditch Your Current Performance Marketing KPIs

Long before the term “online marketing” ever existed, business owners were seeking the best ways to measure the success of their advertising efforts. These key performance indicators (KPIs) were designed to help businesses optimize their marketing efforts and get the most out of every ad dollar.

For the last few years, click-through rate and cost per thousand have been some of the most popular KPIs used by digital advertisers. However, these are not the best metrics for assessing modern online marketing efforts.

When we’re helping our clients refine their marketing strategies, our experts at Insights ABM have started to use KPIs that are better suited for digital advertising. We provide online performance marketing in Dallas and have extensive experience reviewing advertising analytics.

Here’s what you need to know about the changing world of KPIs.

New Kids on the Block

Unfortunately, the current metrics simply do not hold up in the modern digital marketing landscape. Click-through rate and cost per thousand are outdated KPIs that do not provide an accurate assessment of advertising performance.

When you’re attempting to gain real insights into the performance of a digital campaign, you may want to instead explore the benefits of these metrics.

Cost-Per-Click

Cost-per-click (CPC) has long been considered to be one of the top ways of driving new traffic to a website. However, it can also be used to gauge your overall advertising success. A low CPC indicates that you are doing a great job of generating traffic through more organic methods.

If your budget is under close scrutiny, CPC is one of the best paid campaign options out there. You can account for every dollar spent.

When you’re setting up your CPC campaign, you can designate a maximum cost-per-click bid. Your max bid is the most that you are willing to pay for someone to click on your ad. You can set your max bid manually or you can allow Google to manage bid amounts. 

When you’re using automatic bidding, Google’s software will bid for ad space based on the budget that you set. The software will optimize bidding so that it can earn the greater number of clicks using the resources that you have allocated. 

No matter which option you choose, the software will never exceed your budget. You can set a daily budget and run your CPC campaign for as long as you want.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate refers to users that navigate to your site and then leave instead of viewing additional pages of content. High bounce rates are not necessarily a bad sign. Sometimes, readers are able to quickly find the content that they are looking for and simply leave your page.

However, if your current campaign is focused on engaging readers with long-form articles and blogs, then you want bounce rates to stay low. If they are higher than you would like, then it may be time to rework your content or to revisit the layout of your website. High bounce rates may also indicate that you need to create a better call to action.

Time Spent On Site

Instead of focusing on CTR, we suggest analyzing the time that users spent on your site. If users spend a lot of time on the site and are actively scrolling, it is a strong indicator that they are reading your content. 

On the other hand, a high CTR might mean that they are rapidly jumping through multiple pages without actually absorbing any of your content.

Ideally, you want users to spend more time on your site, even if they only navigate to one or two pages. This is a sign that your content is resonating with clients. 

Online Performance Marketing in Dallas

Are you ready to leverage the latest analytics tools to optimize your advertising efforts? Ready to revitalize your marketing campaign by using the most relevant KPIs to guide your decision-making process?

Consider partnering with a premier performance marketing agency in Dallas. An experienced firm can help you to measure your advertising strategies using the latest KPIs.