Marketing KPIs for earned, owned and paid

Performance data for specific channels will help you gauge how engaged your audience is, based on the type of action they’re taking. However, tracking, analyzing and reporting marketing campaign success can be tricky.

There’s a wealth of data you can pull from your website, blog and social channels. So instead of leaving your team to guess which metrics are important, use these KPIs as a guide for earned, owned and paid content.

Paid social media metrics

Social advertising platforms have become increasingly informative. Marketers can be as general or specific as they choose targeting audiences on most social platforms. To ensure your investment on social media is worthwhile, take a look at a few specific metrics that will help determine campaign success as well as audience intent.

Example of paid social media marketing KPIs to measure from a social media marketing agency and public relations agency in Richmond, Virginia

  1. Awareness KPIs – Metrics associated with the awareness phase (the first in the buyer’s journey) are passive. Awareness KPIs on social media include: number of views and number of impressions.
  2. Consideration KPIs – These metrics indicate more engagement from your audience. For paid social media, pay attention to view-through rates, video watch times (the longer, the better) and clicks.
  3. Action KPIs – Sign-ups and inquiries on social media are most indicative of audience fit and intent.

Also pay attention to the cost per impression and cost per action on social media sites to be sure you’re getting the most bang (action) for your buck (dollar spend).

Earned media metrics

Media relations efforts (pitching and placing news stories) are among the most difficult to truly measure and quantify. Use these KPIs to track the performance of your earned media placements.

  1. Awareness KPIs – Calculate the number of impressions a specific media placement earned. For print outlets, determine the circulation and multiply by 2.5 to account for average share or pass-along rates. Many online news sites will provide impressions or readership numbers. For those that don’t try sites like Moz or Similar Web.
  2. Consideration KPIs – If your placement includes a link back to your website, take a look at Google Analytics to determine click-throughs (how many people clicked from the placement to your website) and source (which placement garnered the most traffic back to your site).
  3. Action KPIs – Measure sign-ups via those aforementioned click-throughs. If there’s a huge spike in phone calls or inquiries after a big media hit, be sure to keep track of folks that said they heard about you from your recent news story. Or, if you’ve placed a call to action on the page folks land on after they’ve clicked the link from an article, you should be able to capture that referral traffic. Score!

Owned media KPIs

Owned media is the content your organization publishes on the channels it owns, like your website and blog, and a core element of your content marketing strategy. Use the KPIs below to determine how your owned channels stack up against paid and earned media platforms.

  1. Awareness KPIs – Traffic (views) to your website and blog will help you gauge the popularity of your site and its headlines and links.
  2. Consideration KPIs – Take it a step further and take a look at how long visitors are staying on your web and blog pages before leaving. Time on page is a good indicator of how informative and useful your content is to your audience. The longer, the better.
  3. Action KPIs – Are visitors signing up for your blog (subscribing), filling in forms on landing pages or making contact inquiries? If so, your site is effectively pulling audiences through the buying funnel, taking them from visitors to possible leads.

Encourage your team to take advantage of social reporting tools, marketing platforms and Google Analytics. Focusing on the KPIs listed above will help them take the guesswork out of earned, owned and paid media performance before campaigns end. That way, they can amp up what’s working and pivot where necessary to get the most out of each of your EOP marketing channels.

Which communications and marketing metrics are most important to you and your organization? Tell us in the comments below.

Laura Elizabeth Saunders

Laura Elizabeth is a strategic dynamo, especially when it comes to implementing inbound marketing strategies. She also enjoys doing research, writing and media relations works for a variety of B2B clients.

Read more by Laura Elizabeth

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