KPI (Key Performance Indicator).

What is a KPI?

A KPI (key performance indicator) is a measurable number that shows whether a business, team or campaign is moving towards a specific goal. It is chosen deliberately from everything you could measure, because it links directly to an outcome you care about.

Qualified enquiries per month, cost per customer and revenue from repeat clients are KPIs. Impressions and follower counts usually are not.

Why it matters

KPIs decide what gets attention. Whatever leads the monthly report is what people work to improve, so choosing the wrong ones means effort drifts towards numbers that look good and change nothing. Well-chosen KPIs let an owner see in a minute whether marketing is working, hold suppliers to account and make spending decisions without wading through a long report full of charts.

What good looks like

• Tied to revenue Each KPI should connect, in one or two steps, to money coming in or costs going down.
• Few in number Three to five for a whole marketing function. Beyond that, nothing is really key.
• Clearly owned Someone is named as responsible for each number and can explain why it moved.
• Leading and lagging Pair outcomes such as sales won with earlier signals such as qualified enquiries, so problems show up before the quarter is lost.

What to do about it

Write down your most important business goal for the next twelve months. Then choose no more than five numbers that show progress towards it, at least one of them close to revenue, such as qualified enquiries or new customers won. Note where each number comes from and who owns it. Ask anyone who reports to you on marketing, inside or outside the business, to open every monthly update with those numbers.