The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Metrics and KPIs for Coaches

Today, we’re diving deep into a topic that can truly transform your business: marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). If you’ve ever wondered how to evaluate the success of your marketing or which metrics matter most, you’re in the right place.

There are three reasons why I’m writing this post and why it’s worth your time to read it.

1. You need to track your marketing KPIs to know what to fix.

Here’s the dilemma most coaches face. They work hard to market themselves, get visible on social media, and drive traffic to their offers. Still, they do not know what’s working because they don’t measure marketing data.

They may have a general idea of their overall success based on the number of leads, sales, and revenue. But if something goes wrong with a launch, they don’t know which parts of their marketing plan need the most love and attention.

I will never forget my conversation with the wise John Stringer, my business finance strategist, back in 2016. I was running around crazy doing ALL the things, and I wanted his help. I was months behind on my bookkeeping. He told me that he couldn’t help me until I got my numbers straightened out. I ended up spending 2 weeks over Christmas break getting my Xero file up to date. That next year I doubled my revenue.

“What is measured, improves.” – Peter Drucker

Your marketing stats are just like my bookkeeping. You need to track your numbers and measure the performance of your marketing on each channel and at each step of your funnel. That way, you know exactly which things are working and what needs fixing. 

2. Metrics and mindset also go hand-in-hand.

Here’s another problem I see: If you don’t get the sales you expected to get, it’s easy to feel down and go into the death spiral of negative thoughts like, “My offers stink, my marketing sucks, and maybe I’m just not cut out for this.”

A while back, on one of our group coaching calls, a client started crying when I pointed this out. She felt discouraged about her business, and her self-worth was wrapped up in her business performance and she was considering giving up.

When we looked at her numbers and saw what needed work (her open rates on her emails), the problem no longer felt personal. She knew exactly what her goal was. Even if she didn’t know exactly how to fix it yet, she knew what she was looking for.

It saddens me to think about how many people quit their businesses because things weren’t working when a deep dive into their important marketing metrics might have given them the clues they needed to succeed.

I don’t want that to happen to you, not on my watch. 

3. You don’t have time or energy to waste

Your time is one of your most valuable assets. Every minute spent on ineffective marketing strategies or tasks that produce “meh” results is a minute taken away from your clients, your personal life, or your own well-being.

Years ago, Carrie Wilkerson, a brilliant marketer, client, and friend, reminded me that I owe it to the shareholders who live in my house with me to stop doing what isn’t working and focus on the most productive activities that will grow my business.

Tracking your stats will allow you to identify high-impact strategies that bring the most leads, conversions, and revenue. You’ll also be able to stop wasting your time and resources on things that underperform. And finally, you’ll be able to optimize your time, simplify your marketing, and streamline your workflow.

This means achieving better results with less time and energy, allowing you to regain control over your schedule and work-life balance. Hallelujah!

Now, let’s jump into the meat of this guide:

What are marketing metrics and KPIs?

Let’s start with the basics. Marketing metrics are the numbers, data points, and measurements that quantify the performance of your marketing activities. They are the compass guiding your campaigns, helping you make informed decisions, optimize strategies, and ultimately drive success.

Defining Your Marketing Objectives

Defining your marketing goals is crucial before you can start measuring your KPIs. 

• What do you want to achieve with your marketing? 
• Are you looking to increase website traffic, grow your email list, generate leads, or convert prospects into clients? 

Clear and specific goals are crucial for tracking the right metrics and measuring progress.

Here are some examples of marketing metrics objectives you might want to track

• Campaign Success: If you’re launching a new product or service campaign, your objective might be to measure the success of that campaign and its impact on your business.
• Email Marketing: If email is a significant part of your strategy, you’ll want to focus on metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
• Social Media: For those active on social media platforms, tracking engagement metrics, follower growth, and the reach of your content is crucial.
• Paid Marketing ROI: Return on investment (ROI) is a universal objective. You’ll need metrics that showcase the financial returns generated by your ads.

Key metrics to track to measure progress against your goals

Once you’ve defined your marketing objectives, the next step is to match metrics to your goals. This process is like selecting the right tools for a specific job—each metric has a unique purpose.

For instance, if your goal is to evaluate the success of a recent email campaign, focusing on metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates will provide valuable insights. On the other hand, if your goal is to evaluate your social media marketing, engagement, follower growth, and reach metrics become more important.

Here’s the thing: it’s not about collecting every metric under the sun. It’s about selecting the metrics that measure and align with your specific goals. This ensures that your data collection efforts are meaningful and directly contribute to your business’s growth and success.

Examples of Metrics You Should be Tracking Based on Your Goals

Once you’ve defined your marketing goals, it’s time to choose the most important metrics for your success. The metrics you track will vary based on your specific goals and the channels you use for marketing.

Top 5 marketing metrics for coaches

Below is a list of key marketing metrics that are crucial for coaches and service businesses to track and analyze.

• Website Traffic: Understand the effectiveness of your website in attracting and engaging visitors.
  • Visitors
  • Bounce rate
  • Average session duration
  • Top-performing pages and posts

• Funnel Conversion Metrics: There are many trackable metrics to see how well your lead generation and sales funnels are performing to optimize your conversion rates at each step in the funnel. Here are a few of my favorites.
  • Landing page conversion rate
  • Sales page conversion rate
  • Funnel drop-off points
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS)
  • Return on investment (ROI)

• Email: Email marketing metrics are a way to measure the number of new subscribers, email opens, click-throughs, etc., to gauge the performance of your email campaigns and audience engagement.
  • New subscribers
  • Unsubscribes
  • Open rate
  • Click through rate

• Social Media: Measure brand awareness on your social media channels and understand how well your content resonates with your audience.
  • Total followers
  • Likes
  • Shares
  • Comments
  • Click-through rates
  • Reach and impressions
  • Hashtag performance metrics

• Sales and Revenue: Understand the ROI of your marketing activities and the overall success of your coaching business.
  • Sales calls booked
  • Conversations
  • Proposals
  • Closed deals
  • Revenue generated
  • Sales cycle length
  • Customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV)

Other helpful marketing metrics and KPIs for coaches & service businesses

• SEO & Content Marketing: Measuring the effectiveness of your content marketing and SEO will help you know which topics to focus on.
  • Organic traffic
  • Backlinks
  • Indexed pages
  • Page speed
  • Content quality
  • Featured snippets
  • Local Search rankings

• Pad advertising metrics: Tracking the performance of your paid digital marketing metrics helps to control the amount spent on marketing so you can maximize your marketing budget.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR)
  • Conversion Rate
  • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
  • Cost Per Conversion
  • Ad Quality Score

• Lead Generation: Gain insights into the success of your marketing campaigns in capturing and nurturing leads.
  • Leads generated
  • Lead quality
  • Conversion rate
  • Earnings per lead

• Memberships: Here are some suggested marketing metrics measuring how well you retain members, provide value, and achieve your business goals.
  • Monthly recurring revenue
  • Churn rate
  • Member retention rate
  • Average member lifespan
  • New members
  • Member engagement
  • Inactive members
  • Member renewals

• E-commerce: Assess the performance of your online store to improve sales and customer experience.
  • Revenue
  • Conversion rate
  • Average order value (AOV)
  • Cart abandonment rate
  • Abandoned cart recovery rate
  • Customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV)

These are just a few examples of the metrics you can track. They encompass a wide range of aspects, from campaign effectiveness to the success of your digital marketing initiatives. The selection of metrics should align with your goals and provide valuable insights into the performance of your marketing campaigns.

Utilizing the Right Tools and Marketing Platforms to Measure Performance and Conversions

You’ll need the right tools to track and analyze your performance marketing metrics effectively. Various marketing analytics tools can help you collect and analyze data from different channels. You could use your marketing planner, a simple Google Doc to measure your campaign performance, or a dedicated analytics tool to track your KPIs and metrics.

Here are some popular marketing tools that provide the metrics that marketers and coaches need.

• Google Analytics: This free tool provides comprehensive website analytics, allowing you to track and analyze various things related to website traffic, user behavior, conversion metrics, and more.
• Email Platforms: Some email platforms have more data to help you measure your campaigns than others. But every platform I’ve used will give you metrics to track, like open rates, click-through rates, bounces, measure how many new subscribers you get, etc.
• Social Media Scheduling Tools: A social media management tool allows you to schedule posts. Look for one that includes social media metrics measuring engagement and the performance of your social media campaigns.
• Funnel Builders: Most funnel builders will include a dashboard used to measure the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts.
• Event and Webinar Tools: If you’re doing event marketing like webinars and life events, you’ll want to ensure the platform tracks registrations, attendees, no-shows, etc.
• Paid Ad Platforms: These are some of the best strategic metrics platforms out there. Every paid ad platform I’ve used offers specific metrics for just about anything you want to measure. Heads-up: you will usually need to install tracking pixels or code on your site to track your paid digital marketing KPIs. 

These tools, among others, can give you valuable insights into your marketing performance and help you make data-driven decisions to improve your strategies.

Creating Your Personalized Metrics Dashboard

To track and visualize your metrics effectively, you need a personalized metrics dashboard that provides a comprehensive view of your marketing efforts. Here are some tips to create one and the tools that can help you track your success.

Tools and platforms for tracking

There are numerous tools and platforms available to create a customized metrics dashboard. These tools offer a range of features, including data visualization, real-time updates, and integrations with various data sources. Some popular options include:

• Google Analytics: A versatile and widely used tool for tracking website performance, user behavior, and more. It provides a wealth of data for free.
  
• Klipfolio: A dashboard and reporting tool that integrates with various data sources, helping you create dynamic and real-time dashboards. (They have a free forever plan to get you started with two dashboards!)
  
• Hubspot: Hubspot has a free downloadable marketing dashboard for Google Sheets and Excel. You have to enter your data manually, but it will give you the big picture of where you’re tracking.
  
• Reportz*: I bought this marketing dashboard with a deal on AppSumo. It integrates with Google Analytics, WooCommerce, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. And especially love that it’s a lifetime license, meaning no ongoing subscriptions. (*Please use my affiliate link if you purchase Reportz. It means the world to me!)

Building a comprehensive metrics dashboard

Once you have your metrics dashboard tool, you will want to build your dashboard(s). Here’s a process I followed:

1. Define Your Goals: Start by identifying your business objectives and the key metrics that align with them. What do you want to achieve, and what data will help you measure progress? (This will help you keep your dashboard streamlined and useful!)
   
2. Choose Your Metrics: Select the specific metrics that matter most for tracking your progress. These may include website traffic, conversion rates, social media engagement, email open rates, and more.
   
3. Set Up Data Sources: Connect your chosen dashboard tool to your data sources, such as Google Analytics, social media platforms, email software, and more. If you’re using a spreadsheet and tracking your data manually, I recommend creating link to the page where you pull your report in the column title for each metric. That way, you can transfer the information quickly without having to click here, click there, click everywhere to get to the page you want.
   
4. Design Your Dashboard: Create a visually appealing and organized dashboard that displays your chosen metrics in a clear and accessible manner. Consider using charts, graphs, and widgets for easy data interpretation.
   
5. Customize for Insights: Tailor your dashboard to provide actionable insights. Include comparisons, trends, and benchmarks to help you understand the significance of the data.
   
6. Regularly Review and Adjust: Schedule regular reviews of your dashboard to assess your progress and make data-driven decisions. Adjust your strategy as needed to achieve your goals.
   

A well-structured metrics dashboard is valuable for any marketer or business owner. It will give you a snapshot of your performance and enable you to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy.

Review and Adjust Your Strategy to Hit Each Marketing KPI

It’s essential to regularly review and adjust your strategy depending on the insights you gather from your metrics. Measure campaign data to analyze it against your benchmarks and targets, and identify what’s working and what’s not. Test different tactics, channels, and messages to see what resonates with your audience and drives them to take action. Take what you’ve learned from your successes and failures, try different marketing strategies, and adapt your marketing plan accordingly.

Celebrating Your Successful Results from Your Marketing Measurement Adventures!

It’s important to measure and celebrate your progress. You must celebrate if you achieved a goal like lowering your marketing spend or increasing your subscriber rate! Acknowledge and appreciate the hard work and dedication that went into your marketing. Reward yourself and your team for reaching your goals⏤ especially if you’re still a marketing department of one!

Summary: Why It’s Important to Track Your Metrics in Marketing

Key marketing metrics are crucial for coaches and service providers like us to measure the success of our marketing to know you’re on the right track. You can effectively track and improve your overall marketing performance by defining clear goals, choosing the right metrics, utilizing the appropriate tools, reviewing and adjusting your strategy, and celebrating your achievements. Remember, the best metrics are the ones that align with your goals and help you make better decisions to drive the growth of your coaching business. So, start tracking your sales and marketing metrics and watch your business thrive.

🙂 Happy Marketing!

Heather

P.S. I know that sometimes, when you’re new to a topic, not knowing the terminology can make it feel harder to grasp. For me, this is especially true with things like metrics, finance, legal stuff, etc., when I am already feeling unsure and I’m very aware that there are things I don’t know that I don’t know.

So, if anything in this article confuses you and you want some help untangling your metrics, please reach out. I’m also including a glossary of terms used in marketing to help decode anything you might hear in a marketing conversation. Here’s a link to a post where you will find a bunch more glossary terms for business, marketing, and design.

Glossary: Different Metrics Terms that Marketing Teams Often Use

• A/B Testing: A process of comparing two versions (A and B) of a webpage, email, or ad to determine which performs better in terms of engagement or conversion.
• Attribution Model: A method for assigning value to different touchpoints or marketing channels that contribute to a conversion.
• Bounce Rate: Percentage of website visitors who view only one page and then leave.
• Churn Rate: The rate at which customers or subscribers cancel or stop using a service or product within a given period.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Percentage of visitors, subscribers, etc., who click a call-to-action link (CTA) compared to everyone who saw the content.
• Conversion Rate: Percentage of users who do the action you want them to do, such as purchasing or signing up for a newsletter, out of the total number of visitors.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Refers to the total expenses incurred by a business to gain a new customer, including marketing and sales expenditures.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV or LTV): The estimated revenue a customer is expected to generate over their entire relationship with a business.
• Customer Retention Rate: Percentage of customers who repeat purchases within a specific period, indicating customer loyalty.
• Digital marketing performance: The effectiveness and success of online marketing efforts in achieving predefined objectives, such as increasing website traffic, generating leads, or improving conversion rates.
• Engagement Rate: A measure of how actively users interact with content or a website, often calculated as (Total Engagements / Total Reach) x 100%.
• Heatmap: A graphical representation of data where values are depicted using color intensity, often used to analyze user interaction on a website.
• Impression: How many times an ad or piece of content is displayed or viewed by users.
• KPI (Key Performance Indicator): Specific, measurable data points that indicate the success or performance of a particular aspect of marketing or business.
• Lead Generation: Attracting and capturing potential customers’ information, typically through forms, in exchange for valuable content or offers.
• Marketing Funnel: A step-by-step process guiding a customer through the buying stages, from awareness to conversion, in marketing or sales.
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A prospective customer showing initial interest in a company’s products or services, often identified by marketing teams for further nurturing.
• Return on Investment (ROI): A measure of the profitability of a marketing campaign or effort, calculated as (Net Profit / Cost of Investment) x 100%.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A thoroughly vetted prospective customer considered ready for direct sales engagement due to a higher likelihood of purchasing.
• Segmentation: Dividing a target audience into distinct groups based on common characteristics, behaviors, or demographics for more personalized marketing.
• Session: A single visit by a user to a website, including all interactions during that visit.
• Traffic Sources: The channels or platforms that bring visitors to your website, for example, organic search, paid search, social media, email, or direct traffic.

Psst. I have a huge list of marketing, design, and business glossary terms here if you want to decode any other marketing jargon that’s confused you!