KPIs Are History Part 1: Marketing
We marketers love our Key Performance Indicators, our KPI. We love the security of our “hard” data and metrics: How many opens? Clickthrus? Optins? Our Earnings Per Click and so on. There’s only one problem.
KPIs only measure past actions!
KPIs tell us WHAT someone did, but they can only hint at WHY they made their decision…or if that even matters today! In other words, KPIs are history.
It’s like driving down the interstate looking only at your rearview mirror. Think about the common disclaimer, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Oh, we can rant about being “real time” all we want, but the truth is, every KPI is just a Key Performance Indicator.
Still, great KPIs on a campaign makes your marketing team feel superhuman:
“We really crushed it this month! It took a lot of work but our new campaign surpassed our goals and got in more new leads than ever! Why is it, no matter how many hot prospects we get in the door, it seems like sales blows through them. Those guys are either weak closers or else they’re just lazy. We’re doing all this work and all they do is whine! We need some young turks who know how to make a sale happen instead of making excuses for their own low numbers.”
Meanwhile, over on the sales side it’s a different story. In Part 2 we’ll get Sales’ take on how great the campaign really was!
