As the Vice President, Management Supervisor at gkv, working directly with Clients on digital strategy and implementation, there are at least two questions that I’m asked on a regular basis: “What’s the average return for a digital campaign like this?” and “What can we expect for a click-through rate (CTR)?”

The truth is every digital effort is unique. If a company is going to judge its digital campaign on an “industry standard” or on what a competitor has done, then the company is not giving its campaign an opportunity to work for its brand specifically.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
This is the reason why Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are so important to a digital campaign and should be outlined early in the planning phase. KPIs are no longer just a part of an e-commerce strategy. They now must be incorporated into an overall digital marketing strategy.

The idea behind KPIs is this - use the digital marketing and Web analytics combined with a company’s business metrics to validate the online spend and marketing decisions.

There is no easier way to validate what you spend on digital marketing then if you can show its residual impact within places other than marketing within your organization, such as customer service, sales, operations and shipping. Data can be provided for all of these departments when lined up with digital campaign reporting metrics (CTR, cost per click (CPC), impressions, etc.), telling a complete story of how a campaign has affected a business.

You may just find that your digital efforts are working harder than you thought.

For example:
Take a customer service group that creates a presence on social media channels to direct customer service inquiries from the phone to the Web. With this implementation a one-to-one telephone call becomes a one-to-many response that is automatically archived for future users to peruse before making their own call.

The effect is exponential and can cross business units. For instance, in this case this particular customer service group directed its customer service inquiries to its Twitter feed and to a specific customer service Web site. These two outlets (Twitter and the Web site) reach more customers on a daily basis than customer service representatives could have possibly answered on the phone in one day.

While each digital campaign is different based on overall brand objectives, below are a few starting points that should be considered in the development of your next digital campaign to position it for success.

Digital Campaign Starting Points For Success

1. Let your target audience know what you want them to do and focus your effort.
   Look at the page you are directing users to. If there are 15 ways for them to navigate away from your call-to-action the deck is stacked against your campaign and you’re not positioning yourself for success.
2. Look at reasons you are giving consumers to visit your Web site or to take action
   If your digital campaign uses paid digital and/or social media efforts, what incentives are you offering your target audience to visit your Web site - download a coupon, make a free appointment with a specialist, or access to a free whitepaper?
   
3. Provide multiple ways to convert.
   Understand that not every person that visits your Web site is going to convert immediately. There are different types of visitors; you aren’t marketing solely to one person. Length of time spent on your Web site, numbers of visitors, e-mail registrations, form submissions and friending/following are some positive examples of actions that should be considered success metrics even if they aren’t purchases.
4. If you don’t have a conversion in mind - make one up.
   Collect something, anything. Your campaign should be delivering something for the money you are spending.
5. Make sure EVERYONE knows the KPIs of the campaign and revisit them with key project milestones.
   If you’re going to be judged by KPIs at the end of your work cycle you better be aiming for them upfront and optimizing them throughout the campaign.