Companies of all industries use KPI examples to estimate their success at achieving goals.
But what are the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that align with your targets? To answer this question, first, you need to understand the most important KPIs for your business and industry.
On this page:
- What is KPI? Characteristics of a good KPI.
60 essential KPI examples in a business:
- Digital marketing and website KPIs examples
- Sales manager KPI examples
- Social media KPI examples
- Finance KPIs
- Customer satisfaction KPI examples
- KPI for project manager examples
- Infographics in PDF
What is KPI?
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a value that measures your performance. It helps you understand how your entire business or a concrete division is performing.
It shows how effectively your company is reaching its key business targets.
No matter, in which management level you are operating, you need to monitor your most important KPIs to ensure your team efforts are in the right direction.
However, to be effective and to help you improve your business profitability, KPI must have some critical characteristics. It must follow some rules for creating.
7 Key characteristics of the good KPIs:
- Measurable
They should be measurable to analyze the positive or negative alternations from the target. You should also define what is being measured. For example, when it comes to sales, you may measure sales performance and how many new customers an employee brings in. - Relevant
It means KPIs should be assigned to the relevant manager or team that has the right expertise. This way the results will be more successful. - Simple and clear
KPIs should be so clear and simple that every user understands what exactly the KPI is measuring. - Timely
The KPI reports must be in the right frequency. Not too often and not too infrequently. Only this way the employees can make timely decisions while they aren’t overwhelmed with different types of data. - Visible
It is a must for KPIs to be visible across the organization. There are many data dashboard examples with shareable and collaborative features. Visibility means the teams are more aware of everyday performance and thus can do an improved data-driven decision making. - Actionable
An effective KPI must answer a concrete question to support effective decisions. - Achievable
The more realistic a KPI is, the more likely you are to achieve it. Do not set unrealistic KPIs because they are one of the major team de-motivators.
So, let’s go to the KPI examples in a business.
The Most Important Digital Marketing And Website KPIs Examples
1. Click-Through Rate (CTR) – measures the number of clicks you get on your ads per number of impressions.
2. Cost Per Click (CPC) – shows the actual cost you pay for each click in your pay-per-click marketing campaigns.
3. Cost Per Action (CPA) – measures how much is your cost to attain a type of conversion (such as registration on your website).
4. Website traffic sources – this website KPI example relates to estimating which traffic sources bring visitors to your website. This helps you to define the most profitable marketing channels.
5. Social interactions – measure the levels of engagement with your social media posts and campaigns. Post engagement is the most important metric of your success on social media platforms. More for social media KPI, you can see below.
6. Email click rate – shows who is truly engaged with your email content. Those who are truly engaged click on something in your email. There is a range of email data mining software tools that allow you to explore a large number of emails and shows you important KPIs.
7. Keyword ranking – this is the most important KPI for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Shows how your website is ranking in the search engines machines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo for particular keywords.
8. Landing page conversion rates – shows how many people are visiting each of your landing pages and how many of them are filling your lead capture forms.
9. Cost per lead – you should keep your lead acquisition costs relatively low so that you are able to hold good margins and achieve business growth.
10. Returning website visitors – indicate how efficient is your website at creating and maintaining an audience.
11. The rate of organic searches – what percentage of your traffic is coming from organic searches.
12. The amount of mobile traffic – indicates how effectively your website is optimized for mobile devices like Smartphones and tablets.
13. Average time on a website page – This KPI is vital for organic search traffic because Google ranks website pages based on their relevance.
14. Pages per visit – this digital marketing KPI shows whether your visitors bounce right after arriving at your website or they are interested in your content, stay longer, and read several of your pages.
15. The number of backlinks to your website – These KPI examples show the number of quality links from other authoritative websites to your site. A critical indicator for building your website authority.
More on how to set digital marketing KPIs, you can read in the article “Choosing effective digital marketing KPIs” by Smart Insights here.
Top Sales Management KPI Examples In A Business
16. New leads (Lead flow) – you can call it also new opportunities. This is the number of new leads that are arriving into your sales department each month/week. Ultimately, to increase sales what you need is more leads.
17. Client acquisition rate – indicates how many of the new prospects your reps bring convert to customers.
18. Sales growth – measures your growth in sales over a particular period of time (month, week, year). By measuring the growth of your sales, you also measure the growth of your company.
19. Product performance – If you are selling many products and there are targets for each product, it’s vital to track sales for each of them. This KPI ranks your products based on their revenue performance.
20. Sales per sales representative /sales team – measure the performance of each of your sales representatives or sales teams.
21. Average profit margin – this sales management KPI helps you evaluate the profit margins across your products or services.
22. Sales closing ratio – estimates the ratio between the number of quotes your sales reps sent out and the number of deals they managed to complete and close.
23. Sales target – this critical sales KPI shows the actual revenue vs the forecasted revenue. It allows you to find out if you are on the right path to reach your planned goals.
24. Customer acquisition cost – indicates all costs related to bringing a customer. Your final goal is to increase customer lifetime value and at the same time to cut customer acquisition cost. This way you can maintain a profitable business.
25. Customer lifetime value – the amount of money you can make from a customer over the lifetime of your relationship. The longer you keep customers that pay to you, the more money you’ll make.
26. Average sales cycle length – the goal of this KPI example is to shorten your average sales cycle length. The too long cycles can hurt your sales.
Top Social Media KPI Examples
27. Share of voice – the number of times your brand is mentioned in the various types of social platforms as compared to competitors.
28. Average clicks per post – helpful to find out the type of content that your users are engaging with.
29. Social media followers – a great way to quickly understand where you stand on social platforms.
30. Likes, shares, retweets – an important measure of the reach and engagement of your business when it comes to social presence.
31. Subscriber by age and gender – knowing who is visiting your social profiles is practical. You should understand visitor and reader demographics such as gender, location, age, and etc. They can help you further in your market segmentation.
32. Social sentiment – shows your brand perceptions by customers and shows brand equity. Advanced text analysis software tools allow businesses to understand the sentiment behind brand mentions, giving them the data they need to maintain the brand strategy on track.
33. Goal conversion rate – social media is a great tool for driving non-revenue conversions such as white paper downloads or webinar registrations. Estimating the social conversion rate for achieving these goals helps you assess your success better.
34. Website visits from social media – This is a valuable social media KPI that indicates the number of your fans that take the further step and visit your website. Bringing your fans to your website moves them closer to conversion or purchasing.
35. New vs lost followers – this KPI compares the number of followers you have earned and those you’ve lost over a concrete period. Thereby, you can measure your followers’ growth.
Essential Finance KPI Examples in A Business
36. Gross profit margin = (revenue – cost of products sold)/revenue. This important financial KPI example shows whether you are pricing your products and services appropriately. As you know, your gross profit margin must be big enough to cover your fixed expenses and provide you with a profit.
37. Net profit – this is the money you have after you’ve paid all the costs and bills. Net profit = total revenue – total expenses.
38. Net profit margin – indicates the percentage of your revenue. The equation is: net profit margin = net profit/total revenue. This is one of the most tracked KPIs in finance. It tells how well your business does at turning revenue into profits.
39. Current ratio = your current assets / your current liabilities. Examples of your current liabilities are debt and account payables. Examples of current assets are cash, inventory and accounts receivables. This KPI tells your ability to pay your obligations in the short-term, mainly within the next 12 months. The final goal is to have a ratio higher than 1. A current ratio of below 1 means you don’t have enough cash to pay your bills.
40. Accounts payable turnover ratio – indicates whether you are paying your expenses at an appropriate speed. Shows how fast you can pay off suppliers and other bills.
41. Accounts receivable turnover – shows whether you are receiving your payments in a reasonable time. In other words, it tells how fast you get your payments owed and presents a business’s efficacy in extending credits.
42. Return on assets (ROA) – indicates the efficiency of utilizing your business’s assets to earn a profit. It estimates how profitable your company is when it comes to your total assets. ROA = net income/ total assets.
43. Return on equity (ROE) – measures the profit your business earn from your shareholder investments. ROE = net income (minus dividends to preferred stocks)/ shareholder’s equity (excluding preferred shares).
The Most Important Customer Satisfaction KPI Examples
44. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) – this relates to directly asking your customers to rate their satisfaction with your brand, product, service or overall business. CSAT is the average of all your customer responses. CSAT typically consist of numbers, but it could also consist of smiley faces, stars, etc.
45. Net promoter score (NPS) – tells you the number of your customers that like your brand enough to recommend it to other people. Ultimately, clients referrals are the best type of advertising any business.
46. First response time – measures how quickly your company answers to your customers’ requests. Each customer wants a smooth and fast shopping experience. Otherwise, they will go to your competitors.
47. Customer retention rate – measure your ability to keep a paying customer over a given period of time (week, month, year). Acquiring new customers can be much more expensive than to retain one.
48. Customer satisfaction improvement – this KPI tracks changes and variations in customer satisfaction over a set period of time. If you’ve already had high levels of customer satisfaction and they’re remaining constant, then you’re on the right path.
49. Average resolution time – measures how quickly you can resolve customer issues related to your products or services. The great customer service requires resolving issues quickly and professionally.
50. Brand attributes – shows whether your customers view your brand and business the way you want them to. This customer satisfaction KPI use the words that clients use to describe your brand. By collecting this information from your customers, you can estimate customer service and understand where you stand in the customers’ eyes.
Top Project Management KPI Examples
51. Cycle time – it measures the time that your project needed to complete a certain task. This KPI is important for repeated tasks in a project.
52. Time spent – this is the amount of time that is spent on a given project by all team members. You can measure it also by each team member individually.
53. Actual cost KPI – tells you how much money you have spent on a given project as to date. It consists of all the project-related costs you’ve spent to date.
54. Project’s return on investment (ROI) – indicates whether the benefits of your project exceed its expenses.
55. Budget variance – this is a critical project management KPI that tells you how much the actual budget differs from the planned budget.
56. Cost performance index (CPI) = earned value / actual costs. It shows the efficiency that you gain when you’re using project funds. This KPI enables you to forecast future performance and better realize your funds to projects.
57. Customer satisfaction/loyalty – measures whether the customer is satisfied with your project. This KPI is generally measured effectively by a simple survey.
58. Number of errors – the number of issues and the things that need to be repaired during the project. This KPI affects budget revisions.
59. Percentage of the task completed – defining the percentage of completed tasks gives you a quick overview of your project’s performance. You are able to find out in what phase your project actually stands.
60. Resource utilization – helps you find out what are the limits of your project teams and provides a quick glance at your team’s work. This KPI measures how the time of team members is used when they are working on the project.
Download the following infographic in PDF
Conclusion
Every business is filled with complications. It is imperative to watch kye performance indicators on a daily basis to keep your performance on the track.
The above KPI examples in a business help you to gain a more accurate understanding of your current status, success, and profitability.
There are so many reasons why KPI’s are critical for your company’s growth.
Not only they allow you to measure your targets and receive important information but also help you to understand when you need to improve your atmosphere of learning, to better online your marketing presence or to stimulate more your sales teams.
What are the most important KPIs you are tracking daily? Share your thoughts in the field below.
