Marketing KPIs and Reporting Frameworks
Marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) measure progress towards marketing objectives. Effective KPIs are tied to business outcomes (not just marketing activities), are measurable and attributable, and drive decisions about where to invest or change approach. The challenge is selecting KPIs that reflect genuine marketing contribution — not vanity metrics that look good but do not correlate with business results.
KPI Hierarchy
- Business KPIs: revenue, customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV), LTV:CAC ratio, market share
- Marketing performance KPIs: marketing-sourced revenue, marketing-influenced pipeline, lead volume, lead quality (conversion to opportunity/sale)
- Channel KPIs: SEO (organic sessions, keyword rankings), paid media (ROAS, CPC, CTR), email (open rate, click rate, revenue per email), social (reach, engagement rate)
- Brand KPIs: brand search volume, NPS, share of voice, brand sentiment
Reporting Principles
Report at the right cadence: weekly for operational metrics, monthly for channel performance, quarterly for strategic KPIs. Separate performance reporting (what happened) from insight and recommendation (why it happened and what to do next). Executive dashboards should focus on 3-5 headline metrics — not every available data point. Use Looker Studio, Tableau, or Power BI for visualisation; raw data lives in BigQuery or a data warehouse.