What KPIs to Track at Each Stage of the Marketing Funnel

All of the content a business has online should fulfill user intent, which changes depending on where users are in their buyer’s journey. You can refine your marketing strategy by choosing the right metrics for each part of your marketing funnel. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Top-of-Funnel KPIs

At the start, your priority is capturing users’ attention. The target audience might not be aware that they have a problem. Alternatively, they could know that they need to improve on something but not know how to solve it. Here are some KPIs for this stage.

Impressions from SERPs

Organic impressions increase your chances of convincing users that you have the solution to their problem. When you target the right keywords and optimize your page, you will show up for questions in the niche. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools will let you measure organic search impressions.

Sources of Traffic

Google Analytics also provides data on Source and Medium. ‘Source’ refers to where the visitor is from—for example, a search engine like Google or a social media platform. Meanwhile, ‘medium’ tells you more about the nature of the link—organic or paid, for example.

Tracking new users can also help you clarify your sources of traffic. Since they haven’t been to your site before, they’re a “cleaner” indicator of where people click through to your content.

Ad Impressions and Frequency

Businesses that run ads on Google, Facebook, or Instagram will need to track their ads’ total number of impressions and how many times individual users see their ad. Keep in mind that high ad frequency indicates possible audience fatigue—if people are overexposed to your ads, they’ll likely find them intrusive.

Middle-of-Funnel KPIs

In the consideration stage, your message becomes even more critical. People are already aware that they have a need or want and are looking for solutions to it. Include the following KPIs to evaluate whether your message is coming across the right way:

Sessions

You can measure visits to your website in sessions, which covers all the interactions visitors have with your website in a particular timeframe. You can measure pages per session and session duration.

When you have a high number of pages per session, users find your content engaging. They are likely willing to see more from you.

Generally speaking, the longer your visitors’ session duration, the better it is for your brand. Shorter averages indicate that people aren’t finding value in your content.

You can also gain insights from combining your KPIs. For example, if you have a high number of pages per session but short session durations, it might mean people are flipping rapidly from page to page. It could indicate either disinterest or dissatisfaction with the content.

Bounce Rate

A bounce refers to a user who comes to your site and leaves without interacting with it. Tracking bounce rates is essential because knowing what works entails knowing what doesn’t. If you have data on what causes people to leave, you can adjust things in successive iterations.

Scroll Depth

Measure scrolls using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. It’s vital to measure this in digital marketing campaigns because, unlike impressions and bounce rates, data on scrolling is more accurate. 

Forgetting you have an open tab or clicking an ad you didn’t mean to can skew data. However, if a person scrolls, it’s almost certainly a sign of engagement. They’re likely looking for something on the page.

Bottom-of-Funnel KPIs

At this point, the potential customer is nearly convinced of your product’s merits. At the bottom of the marketing funnel, you’re measuring goal completions, which could mean several things depending on the kind of campaign you launched.

Purchases

These are the easiest metrics to analyze—when someone purchases, they’re converted, which means the current funnel was successful in their case. Get more from this data by adding trackers that will let you know the specific sales page or ad which convinced the user to buy.

Return on Investment

All business owners want a positive ROI on their content marketing efforts. Calculate ROI for digital marketing by knowing the total investment and the total revenue generated from these materials. You can use the conditional segmenting you have for the Purchases section of your analytics to track ROI. Keep in mind that tracking the return on investment for longer buyer’s journeys will be a little more challenging.

ATC and Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment and add-to-cart rates are crucial, especially for e-commerce businesses. Since the checkout is the last page a customer sees before completing the order, you need to ensure that they move smoothly from one page to another. 

If the ATC and abandonment rates are both high, there could be other factors impeding the sale. At this stage, it’s vital to keep nurturing your leads with content from your business. For example, if a customer abandons a cart, you can send them an email with a discount voucher for the items they didn’t check out.

Return Visitors

When people keep coming back to your website, you know that they find value in it. You can easily track the number of return users per page in Google Analytics through the Page Title dimension.

Repeat Buyers

Having repeat buyers is even more important than return visitors to your website. It’s also the best KPI. If a customer chooses to do business with you again, it means they were satisfied with your product or your service the first time. Tracking repeat business isn’t as easy, though—you would need a CRM or customer relationship management system or a point-of-sale system to do this.

Conclusion

Knowing which KPIs to track at each marketing funnel stage will make it easier to develop strategies for subsequent campaigns. Content moves buyers from awareness to conversion, so you must show posts, videos, and images suitable for their current stage. Consulting specialists will help you optimize your campaign and ensure that people see the right things at the right time.

Build a brand for the long term when you team up with Ranked AI. We provide fully managed and data-driven SEO to over 2,500 clients in more than 40 countries—book a call with the team to learn more or activate your free trial!