What’s a KPI? Let’s brainstorm together…

KPI – Key Performance Indicator

Our little secret 🤐 – You’ll sound like you realllyyy know what you’re talking about if you use the term “KPI” in a staff meeting. Take it from me.

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KPIs are really important in marketing. These are the numbers that marketers watch closely to know if their work is paying off. 👀

For example, in my work for my full-time job, I keep a close eye on my Cost Per Click: how much money I had to spend to get one click on an ad.

Let’s say my goal is $0.05 per click. If it starts to get closer to $0.10 per click, I know I need to tweak something to get back down to my goal. My ads are getting too expensive.

But how do we decide what our KPIs are and what our goal numbers should be?

For a church or church-supported school, this is insanely difficult. After all, how can we put a value on reaching souls with the gospel? Well, we can’t (and shouldn’t)!

At the same time, we want to be wise stewards of our resources. Please know that the following suggestions are just that – suggestions (not hard and fast rules).

Here are a few KPIs that, in my mind, would be most valuable for a church or school to track:

1) Bounce Rate / Average Engagement Time

On web: How long does a visitor stay on your site? On each page? Do they end up visiting multiple pages?

Creating a navigation with a logical flow and valuable, engaging (aka not all text) individual pages will be the key to increasing the amount of time visitors spend on your site.

Here’s a great article on bounce rates.

On YouTube: What’s your average watch time on your videos? How could you make your videos more engaging to keep people watching?

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2) Cost Per Acquisition for event registration

If you run paid ads for events…

Pay attention to how much money you have to spend to get one registration. Typically, this should be around $100, but it depends on what you’re advertising and where you’re located.

If you spend 5x that with no results, consider changing your strategy.

If you spend way less than that, awesome! Figure out the average Cost Per Acquisition for YOU and make that your goal.

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3) New vs. Returning Users on your website

50/50 is the golden number here, but my guess is that your website has a higher percentage of returning users. Make a stretch goal and brainstorm ways to increase new users on your site.

Wondering how to find these numbers? It’s a little different for every web host and ad platform. Just email me – I’d be happy to help you find them. 📧

Let me know your thoughts!