What are Key Performance Indicators?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the numbers that help you track progress and success in your business.

Yup. No burying the lead here.

While there are some business decisions that are okay to make from your gut (Does this person feel like the right hire? Do I like this draft of my new logo?), how you feel isn’t usually enough.

The truth is measuring the success of your marketing and making key business decisions often requires numbers to make the right decisions—specifically, you need key performance indicators.

KPIs vary depending on what you want to measure, but can include overall business metrics, like leads and revenue, as well as marketing-specific metrics like engagement and follower count.

But how do you know which ones to track? And where exactly do you track them? Read on for all the details you need to know and how to get started with tracking KPIs for your small business. We’ll cover:

How to pick which KPIs to track for your business
How to set KPIs for your marketing
How to track your KPIs
The benefits of tracking KPIs for your business
Common mistakes when tracking KPIs
Start measuring your success

How to Pick Which KPIs to Track for Your Business

First, let’s talk about how to choose which KPIs to track. There are two schools of thought here. The first is what you might call the "vanity metric" school—these are the metrics that make you feel good but don't actually give you any meaningful information about your business.

For example, your total number of social media followers would be considered a vanity metric because the number of followers doesn't always have a direct impact on your business success. You can read more about why we all need to move beyond vanity metrics here.

The second school of thought would be the "actionable metric" school—these are the metrics that give you insights into what's working and what isn't so you can make changes accordingly. An example of an actionable metric would be your website's bounce rate (the percentage of people who leave your site after only viewing one page).

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So which school of thought should you subscribe to as a small business owner trying to do a better job with marketing? The answer is both! Are you surprised?‍

While it's important to focus on metrics that will give you actionable insights, it's also good to track vanity metrics so you can see your progress over time (especially because these help you understand how your brand is growing).

For example, if you're trying to grow your social media following, tracking your monthly growth is a good way to see if your efforts are paying off. It’s just not as important as tracking KPIs that have a direct impact on your bottom line.

Must-Track KPIs for Wedding Pros & Creative Service-Based Businesses

Your marketing and sales are the main areas of your business where you should be tracking KPIs. After all, marketing usually involves investment, and it’s important to understand if you’re getting a return. And you can’t calculate ROI without a KPI.

Not all businesses operate the same way, which means your KPIs shouldn’t either. Wedding pros and creative service-based business owners need to track metrics that reflect how their clients find and book them. While some of the KPIs are similar, there are key differences in how long people stay in their world and what success looks like.

KPIs for Wedding Pros

Wedding professionals have a unique challenge: their clients are only in the market for their services for a short period of time—usually a year or less. That means their marketing funnel needs to work quickly, and tracking the right KPIs can help make that happen.

Here are some must-track KPIs for wedding pros:

Leads vs. booked clients – How many inquiries are turning into actual bookings?
Leads by source – Where are your best leads coming from? (Google? Instagram? Wedding directories?)
Average booking value – How much is the average client worth to your business?
Website visitors – How many people are checking out your website before inquiring?
Cost to acquire a client – How much are you spending on ads, listings, or marketing efforts to get each booking?
Time on email list before booking – If you have an email list, how long does it take for someone to go from a subscriber to a paying client?

Since wedding pros don’t get a lot of repeat clients (unless you also offer services to their future families or places of employment), tracking how quickly leads convert is key. If you’re seeing a long delay between inquiries and bookings, it might mean you need to improve your follow-up process or make your website and pricing more conversion-friendly.

KPIs for Creative Service-Based Businesses

If you're a designer, photographer, coach, or another type of creative service provider, your marketing funnel often works a little differently. Unlike wedding pros, repeat clients and referrals can play a huge role in your long-term success. People can also follow you for a longggg time before they part with their hard earned cash (there’s no “urgency” of a wedding date to speed the process along).

Here are the KPIs that matter most for creative service providers:

Leads vs. booked clients – Same as wedding pros, but with a focus on long-term relationship building.
Leads by source – Knowing where your clients come from helps you double down on what’s working.
Average project value – What’s the typical price tag of your services?
Website visitors – More visitors should (hopefully) mean more inquiries.
Email list subscribers – Your email list is a goldmine for nurturing potential clients over time.
Email open rate – Are people actually reading your emails? This can tell you if your messaging is landing.
Cost to acquire a client – Just like wedding pros, you want to make sure your marketing budget is working for you.
Time from lead to customer – How long is someone in your world before reaching out and working with you? Can you speed it up?
Repeat clients – How many clients come back for additional work? If this number is low, it might be worth exploring ways to create more ongoing services or packages.
Referrals – How many of your clients are sending new business your way? If this is low, it could be a sign you need a stronger referral system or incentive.

For creative service-based businesses, nurturing leads often takes longer than it does for wedding pros. Someone might follow you on Instagram, join your email list, and not be ready to hire you for six months (or even a year!). Tracking KPIs that measure ongoing engagement—like email list growth and open rates—can help you see if you're building a strong pipeline of future clients.

How to Track Your KPIs

Now that you have an idea of what to track, next, let’s talk about how to track your KPIs. One simple way is to use a spreadsheet—set up a sheet with all of the different metrics you want to track and then update it manually on a regular basis (we recommend monthly).

This method works well if you only have a few KPIs you're tracking but can get unwieldy if you're tracking several different metrics and doesn't always make it easy to visualize how things are going.

Basically? We want better for you.

Another option is to use the KPI dashboard in Enji. With our dashboard, you can track and access your KPIs across all sources without any manual entry. Plus, it gives you a great way to visualize your data and easily track your progress month after month.

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The Benefits of Tracking KPIs for Your Business

There are several key benefits to tracking KPIs, and all of them lead to more control over your business and its growth.

1. You Can Make Data-Driven Decisions

“Data-driven” is practically a buzzword now, but it’s true. Tracking your KPIs helps you make data-driven decisions. Instead of going with your gut or making decisions based on what you think is working, you can look at your KPIs and see what's actually working (and not). This can save you time and money because you're not wasting resources on things that aren't moving the needle.

2. You Can Measure Your Success

Another benefit of tracking KPIs is that it gives you a way to measure progress and success. This can be helpful in a few different ways—it can give you a confidence boost when you see progress being made and it can also help you identify areas where you need to make changes.

For example, if you see that your website's bounce rate is high, that's an indication that you need to improve your website (write stronger content, improve load time, or even attract a more ideal audience).

3. You Can Stay Accountable Toward Your Goals

Finally, tracking KPIs can help you stay accountable to your goals. Small business owners are great at constantly moving the benchmarks so they are never satisfied. But when you have specific metrics you're tracking, you're more likely to stay focused on those goals and make sure you're taking the necessary steps to achieve them.

Mistakes When Tracking Your KPIs

We’re human after all, and it’s easy to make mistakes when tracking your KPIs. Especially if you’re just getting started with setting up your reporting, make sure you avoid these pitfalls.

1. Only Focusing on Vanity Metrics

Like we mentioned above, vanity metrics are okay to track as long as you’re also paying attention to your actionable metrics. Only paying attention to one will give you a skewed view of your business’s true performance.

2. Tracking Too Many KPIs

When you start creating reports, it can be easy to want to track every number you can. But, more data isn’t necessarily better. In fact, it can make your goal posts hard to nail down, which makes everything nearly impossible to measure. Stick with just a few KPIs for each channel or initiative you’re looking to measure. As you hit your goals, you can always shift KPIs depending on what you want to focus on.

3. Using Poor Quality Data

Especially if you’re manually collecting your data, it can be easy to accidentally grab incorrect numbers. In a lot of cases, people tend to grab numbers from a variety of sources, making their data inconsistent and incorrect. Instead, stick with the same data source for every channel or initiative you’re tracking. Better yet, use our KPI Dashboard that aggregates everything for you!

Ready to Start Tracking Your KPIs?

Running your business without setting KPIs can only add to your stress—and you don’t need any more stress as a business owner! Get started with Enji’s KPI dashboard to finally see all your metrics in one place (and feel good about all the marketing moves you’re making)! Start your free trial now.