10 Critical Brand Marketing KPIs You Should Be Measuring in 2020
March 25, 2020
When it comes to creating new marketing campaigns for your brand, data is king. Using a data-driven strategy ensures that you can not only create but even predict how some of your brand marketing campaigns are going to go.
There are a few Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) your brand might already be tracking, and in this post, we want to highlight more important ones as you plan through and execute your next marketing campaigns.
By evaluating and measuring these KPIs, you can use the data to glean new insights, come up with fresh campaigns, and even use them as a basis for your next tests and experiments.
Ready to level up your next marketing campaigns this 2020? Be sure you’re keeping an eye out for these important metrics.
Brand KPIs you should measure in 2020
To help you appreciate these metrics even better, we’re presenting them under different stages in a customer’s journey. By seeing where they fit in your customer’s buying stages, you can find out where to make improvements with specific tactics and activations.
Awareness stage
During the Awareness stage, you essentially want to know whether your customers know about you and remember your brand. The KPIs you should be tracking under this stage are:
Sentiment
Sentiment can tell you your overall brand health by informing you what people know and feel about your brand. You can measure this KPI in terms of opinions about your brand or what customers are saying about you online. With this, you can adjust your marketing efforts and specific product messaging to better suit your campaign goal.
For example, KFC was able to do this by tuning in to the unique positioning of their brand. They jumped onboard meme culture and pop references to differentiate their brand from other fast food chains who seemed to focus on wellness-specific themes and feel-good emotions of customers.
Unsurprisingly, knowing their customers respond positively to their sometimes wacky brand activations has only encouraged them to keep doing so. Some of their more popular campaigns include releasing a Colonel Sanders dating simulator and even creating promotions for unique (or downright outrageous) limited edition food items.
By tapping into their customers’ sentiments that KFC keeps up with pop culture, the brand released an exclusive simulation game popular among their audience. (Image source: Steam)
Social mentions
Social mentions can be an important metric that tell you how well your campaigns are doing to generate conversation around your brand. Go on channels where your customers are and start tracking what they’re saying about you. Plus, take note of the frequency your brand is mentioned as much as the subject or comments about you.
You might also be able to unwrap important insights about your brand in the eyes of customers by reading between the lines. What do these mentions say about the role of your brand in customers’ lives? Remember: seeing no brand mentions is equally important feedback.
Top-of-mind brand recall
Being top-of-mind should be the gold standard for your brand. Brand recall tells you whether or not customers remember your brand among the sea of competition – and the order by which they remember is equally important information.
For example, if you were to ask a customer which brand they think of when you say “e-commerce store builder,” chances are they’ll say Shopify over, say, WordPress.
Brand recall is best measured with surveys or focus group discussions. It’s also best if you don’t plaster your brand name or brand elements all over the study to ensure there has been no prior conditioning that may sway results.
Share of voice
Share of voice measures how your brand stacks up against competitors in terms of visibility and how much of the conversation you control around your industry. This isn’t to be confused with market share which exclusively measures revenue versus other competitors.
One way to measure share of voice is to look at the volume of your brand or product mentions versus your competitors’ on social media.
Consideration stage
In the consideration stage, you use metrics that tell you whether or not people actually want to purchase from your brand. Metrics to track are:
Purchase intent
Purchase intent simply asks potential customers whether or not they’d buy from your brand. You’ll want to follow up their responses by getting to know why or why not to see how you can keep improving your product or service.
Also cross-check these responses versus actual purchase history. Someone can say they would buy from your brand, but when it comes to actually making purchase, they buy something cheaper or different.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate on product and checkout pages can actually tell you how customers feel about making a purchase from your brand. High bounce rates on your product pages can mean customers don’t find your offer very relevant or appealing, while low bounce rates can indicate people are spending time on your page, presumably to purchase or not.
Decision Stage
In the decision stage, you want customers to choose you over the competition and take action – which, in most cases, means making a purchase. Here are important KPIs you should measure to see how well your marketing campaigns are doing in this stage:
Conversion rates
Conversion rate is defined as the percentage of visitors on your landing page that take a desired action, be it making a purchase, signing up for a lead magnet, or contacting your business.
To get your actual conversion rate, use the following formula:
Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%
You can be more specific and calculate conversion rates from specific ads and landing or product pages or use it to compare campaigns, channels, keywords, and the like.
Cost-per-acquisition
Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) tells you how much you spent in order to get someone to purchase from you. This is an important metric to track alongside your sales revenue, since you can determine whether or not you might be spending too much money just to convert one lead into a sale.
CPA gives you a snapshot of your campaign health and can inform your next marketing budget. Of course, the goal is to aim for a low CPA, so you can compare ROI of different channels to see where you might be spending too much for little to no result.
Delight stage
The delight stage is important for brands in this day and age – what are you doing to turn customers into loyal customers or even brand champions? Here are two metrics you should be tracking:
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score (NPS) can tell you how willing a customer is to refer or promote your brand to other people. A recent study showed that 49% of customers are willing to share their positive brand experiences on social media, so NPS can gauge to signal your overall brand health.
You can measure NPS by surveying current customers how likely they are to recommend your brand. Respondents who answer 9-10 are called promoters; 7-8 passives, and 0-6 detractors. Subtract the percentage of your detractors from the percentage of promoters, and you have your NPS.
Aside from relying on customers, you can also improve NPS by doing outreach campaigns to valuable influencers and thought leaders in your industry. Even getting a small, passionate group of fans who love your product or service is enough to sway some customers who may still be in the consideration or decision stages.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Acquiring new customers can cost up to 5 times more than retaining current ones. That should tell you how valuable Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is. An Adobe report found that business’s top 10% of customers spend 3 times more than the average customer, while the top 1% are spending 5 times more.
To calculate CLV, this handy post from HubSpot can walk you through all the steps you need. Once you’ve calculated CLV, you can focus your efforts on retaining current customers to encourage repeat purchase and even become your brand advocates.
Next steps
As you plan your next campaigns for 2020 and beyond, pay attention to these important metrics. Use data at the forefront of your marketing strategy, and you’ll find it easier to create successful campaigns that grow your brand, make sales, and keep current customers happy and loyal.
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