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55 Marketing Metrics

John Spacey, updated on March 18, 2021

Marketing metrics are techniques for measuring the effectiveness of advertising, promotion, pricing, sales and product development efforts. They may be used to measure marketing at the organizational, department, team, channel, salesperson, customer, demographic, segment, page or advertisement level. The following are common marketing metrics:

Average Deal Size

The total or average value of deals at different stages in a sales pipeline. In industries with a complex consultative sales process, this is an important metric that provides visibility into revenue for upcoming quarters.

Average Order Value

Average over value can be broken down by channel and other factors.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors to a page that leave without clicking anything.

Brand Advocate Score

A brand advocate is a customer who spreads positive information about your brand. Measuring brand advocacy typically involves analysis of social media streams for positive mentions of your brand. Positive product rankings on ecommerce platforms are also an important advocacy indicator.

Brand Awareness Rate

Brand awareness goals typically include customer perceptions of your quality, features, brand image and customer experience. Brand awareness metrics are typically measured by polling a sampling of customers. For example, customers might be asked about your warranty to see if they're aware that you offer a free lifetime replacement policy for a product.

Brand Recognition Rate

The percentage of people in a particular target market who can identify your brand from its visual symbols.

CAC:CLV Ratio

Customer Acquisition Cost expressed as a percentage of Customer Lifetime Value is a common metric that's appropriate for an executive management report or dashboard as an indicator of overall marketing effectiveness.

Churn Rate

The percentage of customers that a business loses over a period of time. A common metric for subscription services calculated as cancellations as a percentage of total customers.

Click Through Rate

The percentage of people who visit a page who click on a particular advertisement or link.

Conversion Rate

A conversion rate is the percentage of customer visits that result in achievement of a marketing goal such as a sale.

Cost Per Acquisition

An advertising model whereby the advertiser pays when an ad generates a customer acquisition.

Cost Per Click

An advertising model that charges an advertiser when a person clicks on their ad.

Cost Per Impression

An advertising model whereby an advertiser pays when an ad is displayed to a person. Often represented as Cost Per Mille (CPM), the cost for one thousand ad impressions.

Cost Per Lead

An advertising model that charges an advertiser when a customer signs up for an offer.

Cost Per Opportunity

Cost per opportunity is usually an internal marketing measurement that calculates a cost for an opportunity.

Customer Acquisition Cost

The total business expenditures that can be associated with the acquisition of a new customer. Often averaged for all customers with overhead expenses included.

Customer Events

It is common for marketing teams to identify a number of events that lead to goals such as leads, customer purchases and loyalty card signups. Events aren't goals themselves but steps that are known to lead to the goals such as visits to a store or engaging with staff in friendly conversation. Such events are often tracked as totals for a period of time.

Customer Experience Score

A broad term for comprehensive measurements of customer thoughts and feelings about of a brand experience. Includes a number of proprietary industry metrics offered by management consulting firms. It is equally common for organizations to develop their own experience score metrics.

Customer Lifetime Value

The total future net revenue associated with a customer discounted to present value. Customer Lifetime Value is a critical metric that is used to evaluate marketing, advertising and customer service initiatives.

Customer Retention Rate

The percentage of customers who stay with you over a period of time. The opposite of customer churn rate.

Customer Satisfaction Rate

A broad category of metrics based on surveys and ratings by customers. Often based on a single question to the customer. For example, a hotel may ask guests how satisfied they were with their stay.

Deal Loss Reason

It is common for sales organizations to track the reasons that deals are lost with categories such as budget, competition and needs mismatch.

Exit Rate

The percentage of people who exit your website from a particular page.

Goal Completions

The number of customers who complete a goal such as signing up for a loyalty card. May be calculated as a rate by dividing by total visitors to a web site, page or physical location.

Gross Margin

In many cases, the margins associated with each deal requires management approval. As such margins are often measured at the sales team level as an indicator of management effectiveness.

Lead Contact Rate

The percentage of leads that are contacted within a period of time. The depth of contact may also be tracked, such as followups.

Lead Response Time

The average time it takes to contact a new qualified lead.

Lead To Close

The average sales cycle time calculated from the time a new lead is qualified to deal close.

Loyalty Score

Metrics that indicate brand loyalty such as the number of highly active customers. For example, a brand may track the number of customers who make a purchase once a month or more.

New vs Returning

The percentage of visitors who are new to your website or physical locations. Returning customers is a sign of awareness and loyalty.

Opportunity To Win

The percentage of opportunities that close.

Page Views

The number of people who view a page. A related metric, unique page views, only counts each person once if they visit multiple times.

Pages Per Session

The average number of pages that people view when they visit your website.

Payback Period

A general business metric that indicates how long an investment takes to reach break-even. Often applied to marketing investments such as advertising campaigns or new product development.

Percentage Marketing Cost

Marketing overhead expressed as a percentage of total revenue. May be used to benchmark marketing effectiveness compared to an industry or a competitor.

Percentage Sales Cost

Sales costs including incentives and commissions expressed as a percentage of total revenue.

Proposal Win Rate

The percentage of sales proposals that result in a deal.

Purchase Frequency

The average frequency of purchases for identified customers.

Quota Achievement Rate

The percentage of salespeople who meet their quota in a given period.

Repeat Purchase Rate

The percentage of customers who make at least one repeat purchase.

Research And Development Cost To Revenue

Research and development costs expressed as a percentage of total revenue.

Return On Investment

Return On Investment is the gain of an investment expressed as a percentage of its cost. A common way to evaluate marketing strategies.

Revenue By Channel

Revenue and revenue trends broken down by sales channel such as ecommerce vs retail.

Revenue Per Click

The average revenue that results from clicks on a advertisement.

Revenue Per Salesperson

Revenue broken down by number of employees. Commonly used as an industry benchmark.

Revenue Per Visitor

Revenue per visitor to your website or locations.

Sales Cycle Length

The total time it takes from acquiring a lead to closing a sale.

Session Duration

The average time that people spend on your website.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

The percentage of customers who start a shopping cart but fail to make a purchase.

Social Media Score

An aggregate score of positive vs negative social media exchanges about your brand on social media. A number of technology tools and services provide tracking of social media metrics for brands.

Time To Breakeven

The time for a new product to recoup its research and development costs.

Time To Market

The total time it takes to develop and launch a new product from concept to the first customer.

Time To Purchase

The average duration from a customer's first visit to their first purchase.

Visit Duration

The average duration of a visit to a physical location such as a retail shop.

Wallet Share

The percentage of a customer's spend on a particular category that goes to your products. For example, your share of a customer's total information technology budget.