How to measure the right KPIs

Marketers have been trying to measure their performance and sometimes ROI in traditional media for years. The internet has opened up a wealth of data from impressions to click-through rates, but still, marketers are asking which key performance indicators (KPIs) really matter.Here are some ways of figuring out which KPIs you should be looking at for a particular campaign.1. Display KPIs are making a comebackWhile some think engagement is the holy grail of digital marketing, traditional KPIs like Cost Per Mille (CPM), which were traditionally used for awareness-driven media such as print and TV, are making a comeback with display banners and even viral videos.Engagement is simply an interim KPI, which should have other KPIs wrapped around it, including brand-building and awareness, purchase and loyalty and repeat purchases."You might be tempted to just measure purchases but you can't get people to buy things without awareness, engagement and loyalty marketing," Jeff Ng, director and general manager at Guru Online in Hong Kong, said.Apart from tracking how advertising or engagement campaigns lead to purchases on e-commerce platforms, the relationship between sales and the other KPIs for brands for which e-commerce is not appropriate, are determined by experience.Different forms of performance, such as driving awareness or customer engagement, are not limited to particular media or platforms.For example, direct response TV used to be popular in the past, where you could get a major discount for calling into a TV show to buy a product showcased on air.  Today, TV is mostly used for brand-building through TVCs.2. Quality trumps quantityThe key to mining gold from large amounts of data is to figure out how to interpret the data qualitatively to reflect the breadth of your reach, particularly for small markets like Hong Kong and Singapore, according to Ralph Szeto, managing partner at CMRS Digital Solutions.For example, if 80% of your audience only watches 10% of your brand video, then no matter how many views you have, it's not a quality audience and the number does not reflect the video campaign's actual performance."It is becoming increasingly difficult to chase the big numbers because the Opportunity to See (OTS) is becoming more fragmented as a variety of channels compete for the same eyeballs," CMRS managing partner Mark Chan adds.On social media, setting goals for the number of fans you should hit after a campaign should be realistic - few brands are able to garner as big a fan base as publishers, for instance.It is important to ensure that your KPI matrix for social media does not overlook why people read your content in the first place - and it's probably not for the same reasons why people would read a publisher's content on Facebook.3. Track slightly less direct KPIs than e-commerce to tweak campaigns and strategy as you go alongThose looking for a more direct way of measuring the performance of marketing campaigns and do want to start up e-commerce for the brand, running a special promotion for a limited period of time will help you get a sense of whether your marketing strategy is on the right track.With awareness campaigns, Scott McBride, head of digital at Ogilvy & Mather Group Hong Kong, says he would plan for the lowest cost per view and highest view count using historical or industry averages."These are the levers I will track throughout my campaign and optimise for performance to ensure that I hit my goal," he said.Measurement tools such as brand awareness surveying tools can be used to measure brand consideration shift between an exposed group and a control group.4. Figure out which of your social media fans are genuineIf you are running a social media contest offering incentives like gifts, you may experience a sudden boost in your fan base.  But it is imperative that you make sure they are genuinely active fans and real brand advocates rather than short-term incentive chasers.Otherwise, the high number of fans you have would be meaningless or short-lived, and you may probably only hit low-level engagement benchmarks such as likes while high-level engagement KPIs like comments would be far and in between.5. Look for continuity in customer loyalty data for old and new media Customer loyalty data measuring the number of repeat purchases by the same customer in new media should show continuity with loyalty data from traditional media to see if the effect of up-selling and cross-selling in the digital world is comparable.