How do you know if your company is successful? You set goals and make plans, but it doesn’t stop there. KPIs, or key performance indicators, are what your organization measures to see if it is on track to meeting its goals. They are all about helping you understand where you are right now so that you can get to where you want to be.
Why Are They Important?
Measuring the right key performance indicator will help your company determine specifically what is working, and where changes need to be made. Company objectives translate into campaigns or initiatives, which can then be assessed. They are important for any type of organization to have, and provide information that can be turned into actionable steps. Analyzing them allows you to see very clearly if you’ve met your goals, and keep your company moving towards its desired outcome.
Research from Advanced Performance Institute found that “less than 10% of all the metrics that are collected, analyzed and reported in businesses are ever used to inform decision-making.” Yikes.
If your business decisions aren’t based off of data, then what are they based on? KPIs give you a measurable reason for the decisions you are making. The assertions that are made about your business should be backed up with evidence and facts, and that is where these indicators comes in.
Measuring KPIs can lead to the following benefits for your company:
The performance indicators your company chooses to measure will vary depending on your industry and company-specific objectives. A challenge for many companies is deciding which key performance indicators, out of thousands of possibilities, are most important. Data is all well and good, but it shouldn’t be collected arbitrarily. You need to know how to build strategies from it in order to continue moving forward. These indicators help your company to see if you should continue doing something or do more of it, stop doing something entirely, or make changes to what you’re doing.
What’s The Difference Between A KPI And A Metric?
These are more than just data or metrics. A metric is just a number of something, but not all metrics are a KPI; they need to be measured against your company goals and objectives. When you begin to sort through a sea of numbers and reports, and make comparisons or draw conclusions, that is where they arise.
What Ones Should You Be Measuring?
The KPIs your company should measure will be based off of overall organizational objectives, with each team or department having the potential to measure their own individual indicators. Objectives translate into campaigns or initiatives, which can then be assessed.
Every company is different, but with your marketing strategy, here are a few that are always a good idea to measure:
Make better-informed and strategic decisions for your company by taking time to not only establish goals, but determine which key performance indicators will help you measure success.