Key Performance Indicator (KPI) frameworks are very important. As far as Web Analytics is concerned, they have been referred to as the “difference between winners and losers” by none other than Avinash Kaushik, the Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google – one of the most influential people in digital marketing. Consequently, we’ve put together a three part series covering: 1. What KPI frameworks are, and why exactly we need them, 2. The process gone through when building them 3. Sample models and further discussion This blog post deals with the first in this series, “What KPI frameworks are, and why we need them”. In a recent article by DM news (http://www.dmnews.com/infographic-marketers-struggle-to-make-the-data-driven-grade/article/322172/), it was revealed that the average grade marketers received when being asked to evaluate their relationship with data was a worrying “B-”. This serious lack of confidence is in some ways unsurprising. Marketers are overwhelmed by data – there are increasing quantities of information from an ever-widening variety of sources which we have the theoretical opportunity to interrogate, but the practical impossibility of being able to examine.

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Infographic by DM News This has serious ramifications – paraphrasing Avinash: the principle cause of failure for most digital marketing campaigns is the inability to assess this data and to determine its significance. Creating a KPI framework, also referred to as a Digital Marketing and Measurement Model, addresses this by organising desired business outcomes such as “increased brand awareness” with things that we can measure such as “branded traffic”. This is done via various processes which vary based on the nature of the particular type of KPI framework used, but irregardless; have the same intended outcome: to expose opportunity by helping us prioritise what metrics we should pay the most attention to. Besides helping to direct optimisation, these frameworks have the additional benefits of helping to align thinking across an organisation, and creating consistency with reporting which makes it much easier to quickly gain a holistic view of all digital marketing activity. Hopefully, you are now intrigued by how this tool can help you improve your “data grade”. In the next article we will help you get started by going through the step-by-step process for generating a full KPI framework. To make sure you don’t miss out when this article is released, please follow our Twitter account.