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For years, marketers have been trying to set trackable metrics around their activities to validate their value and business contribution. There are thousands of articles on the Web that say you should track X, Y, Z, and just as many articles that say you should be tracking A, B, C. So what marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should you actually be tracking?

When trying to answer this question, I believe you have to first take a look at what types of marketing professionals are on your team. Do you have a social guru? A communications/PR pro? An SEO? The answer to “Which KPIs should I be tracking for my team?” should always start with figuring out where your people are spending their time and energy.

This is essential because each of these job functions (Comms, SEO and Social Media) have very specific KPIs that are different from one another. If you try to evaluate your social media specialist the same way you are evaluating your SEO specialist, you are setting your team up for failure. Plain and simple.

For the rest of this post, I will run through what I believe to be the most important KPIs for these three marketing areas — Communications, SEO and Social Media. While there are dozens of other marketing job functions out there, these have become the main pillars of most digital marketing shops.

Marketing KPIs for Communication Professionals

Public Relations

I come from a PR agency background, so I know how hard it is for a communications professional to prove their value to a client or executive. It’s never been easy to prove how that awesome placement you landed on New York Times, Forbes or Entrepreneur actually drove business value past brand awareness. Below are some KPIs you should be tracking ASAP! (If you can present these stats during your next performance meeting, you will knock the socks off your client/executive.)

Share of Voice:

The percentage of your brand’s coverage relative to your competitors.

Advertising Value Equivalency:

The cost ($USD) to generate the same number of impressions/views through paid advertising. Many tools like Cision and Meltwater can help you calculate this.

Potential Reach:

The total viewership of the Websites (blogs, news publications, associations, etc) where your earned media coverage appeared.

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