KPIs – Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in marketing are specific, measurable metrics used to evaluate the success of marketing strategies, campaigns, and initiatives.

KPIs provide insights into the performance of various marketing activities, helping your architecture firm track progress toward its goals, make data-driven decisions, and optimize your marketing efforts.

Different KPIs are used to assess different aspects of marketing performance, such as brand awareness, lead generation, customer engagement, and revenue generation.

KPIs define SMART goals and objectives within your Marketing Plan.

Most Common Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Their Relevance for Architecture Firms’ Marketing

Some common categories of KPIs in marketing are:

Website Traffic and Digital Performance KPIs

• Pageviews: The total number of pages viewed on your website.
• Average Session Duration: The average time users spend on your website during a session.
• Organic Search Traffic: The number of visitors who arrive on your website through organic search results.
• Paid search traffic. See SEM Marketing and Advertising.
• Referral traffic.

As we learn by studying a sales funnel, especially in the case of architecture firms, the amount of website traffic you generate is the first stage of how architects get leads.

Engagement KPIs

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measures the percentage of people who click on a link or call to action in your marketing content.
• Time Spent on Page: The average amount of time users spend on a specific webpage.
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who navigate away from your website after viewing only one page.
• Engagement Rate: Measures the level of interaction with your content, such as likes, shares, comments, and retweets on social media.

Click-through rate (CTR), the time spent on a page, and the bounce rate are of special interest to all businesses, not only architecture firms.

CTR is a key indicator both for advertising campaigns and for organic traffic. Google uses it to determine the relevance of your page for users’ queries.

For an ad, a low CTR means that you have to optimize its copy. For organic searches, it also indicates an unattractive snippet.

The time spent on a page is extremely important. It shows if that page gets the attention it deserves or not. If you posted a 4-5 minute read and it spans the attention for only 20-30 seconds, your content it’s not catchy enough.

The bounce rate measures the percentage of your website visitors that don’t engage. However, a bounce might also count visitors who only want a piece of information. They might leave as soon as they get it.

If you entered this page just to find out what a KPI is, and then left, it was a bounce. But if it was all that interested you, then it’s not such a big problem.

Lead Generation KPIs

• Conversion Rate: Measures the percentage of users who take a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or filling out a form.
• Cost per Lead (CPL): The cost associated with generating a single lead through marketing efforts.
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs): They differentiate leads based on their level of engagement and readiness to convert.

Conversion KPIs

• Conversion Rate: Measures the percentage of leads or prospects who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or requesting a consultation.
• Average Order Value (AOV): The average value of orders or purchases made by customers.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The cost of acquiring a new customer.

Advertisement KPIs

• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): Measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
• Marketing ROI: Measures the overall return on investment for your marketing activities.
• CPC – Cost per click
• CPM – Cost per 1000 impressions.
• CPA (Social Media) – Cost per like, share, and page visit.

Social Media KPIs

• Followers and Fans: The number of people following your social media profiles.
• Engagement Rate: Measures the level of interaction with your social media content.
• Clicks, Shares, Likes, Comments: Specific actions users take on your social media posts.

Email Marketing KPIs

• Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open your email.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measures the percentage of recipients who click on links within your email.
• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of recipients who opt out of receiving further emails.

Content Performance KPIs

• Pageviews: The number of views for a specific piece of content, such as a blog post or video.
• Time on Page: The average time users spend on a specific content page.
• Social Shares: How many shares your content has on social media platforms?

How to Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

You use KPIs to measure marketing results or to track progress as you execute your campaigns. But first, you must define the key performance indicators of your SMART Marketing goals and objectives.

As an example, your marketing objective can be to double your monthly visits to your architecture firm’s website in 6 months, from 500 visits to 1000 visits.

This is a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) objective. Your KPI would be visitors/month.

You can choose between multiple strategies: Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, or even Social Media Marketing (SMM). If you are using one of the last two strategies, you can set another KPI, CPC- cost per click.

It is important if your clicks cost $1/click, $5/click, or 0,20 $/click, right? Your campaign would cost $500/month, $2500/month, or $100/month, right? 6k, 30k, or 1,2k per year are quite different budgets.

But creating also quality content, it will rank organically and bring free visitors. So you might balance your budget, sponsoring the new content in the first months till the organic traction manifests itself. So executing your marketing plan requires a constant measurement of relevant KPIs to adapt your campaign accordingly.

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