Have you ever measured your KPIs in Product marketing? Working on Product Marketing KPIs is every business’s need of the hour. However, with KPIs being the determinant force, you ought to understand which metric would act in favor of your product. This is a realm of expertise where data plays a key role and if you understand what triggers your plans to fruition, you are on the right path of Product Marketing.
Whatever your business niche and however unique your product and service may be, this needs to be marketed well. Unless the world knows about your product, you cannot gain assured sales 24/7. With the help of Digital Marketing, Saas companies can drive a successful path for their product marketing goals. This process becomes a hard one, to compile and understand when the intuitive behaviors of the audience are in the picture.
It also makes it difficult for marketers to understand what is the following action when the meaning behind the data is not configured properly. This is where expertise and proper data analysis play a role. For this, if you are into a solid Product marketing career, you should know further about the Top Product Marketing KPIs that can help leverage the company’s sales.
Table of Contents
KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. It means the key or the most important signals that will add a purpose to the Product Marketing Strategies, At one glance, they look like the product marketing metrics, but they do have a subtle difference. This will be explained in detail further below.
However, to give you an idea, KPIs will compare and measure the level of progress of a product marketing effort. This evaluation is done after considering the marketing goal of the company. Metrics, on the other hand, will give an overall health review of the business and whether it is in line with the short term and long term business goals. In short, KPIs are all bout the inner details and metrics that will deal with the comprehensive picture of the business growth.
Product Marketing in Saas companies is very important as that helps to make the audience aware of the product lines of a Saas company, and promote it. Furthermore, a proper product marketing strategy will help to build user retention and expand the customer base consistently.
The process is way different from traditional marketing, as this is used in Digital marketing to add value to the sales and revenue metrics of the Saas company. Proper digital marketing efforts ensure that Saas Product marketing KPIs are identified and worked upon. This is done so that product positioning, product user growth, and customer account expansion take place over the years. Unlike normal sales marketing, where marketers just try to sell the product with offers and freemium models, this is different. Saas product marketing first positions the product concept as a value addition to the customer and gives solid reasons why they need to have it. This communication is virtual, targeted, and result oriented. Once convinced, customers generally stick to it in the name of brand loyalty and that is what product marketing wishes to derive at a macro level.
Companies that cannot own a product marketing team on their own should outsource and hire expertise from well-experienced team of digital marketers, content marketers, and SEO experts who will guide you on how to take the entire customer journey forward in a phase by phase manner. This will involve a lot of data analysis, through which you add more marketing channels, and the method of user acquisition will be vivid.
When it comes to performance evaluation and tracking, all we can say is that both are invaluable for a company. However, when you work with them, it is best to understand their subtle differences and choose the aspect that suits your work goal the most. Both are interrelated and you cannot work on a KPI without the help of metrics. If you want to add value to your numbers, then you need to use KPIs for your product marketing efforts.
Product Marketing KPIs is the Product Marketing Key Performance Indicators. These are absolute game changers when it comes to the marketing side of Business. The however fabulous product you have in your kitty, it ought to be marketed – not once, but consistently. This too has to be done via the Internet and that is where Digital arketing will play a role for you.
The key or the most important indicators are highlighted to help your work get more defined, strategic and fruitful. They are measurable, comparable, and give insight with a specific, targeted style of thought process. This is a detailed approach to each issue or problem or goal you present.
This segment of data is more operational. It gives an overall outlook of how the numbers are closer or farther from the company goals. It will indicate whether the department goals are met, company sales numbers are met, and the ROI process is being executed as planned.
If you want to know whether you are channelizing your social media ads in the right direction, Metrics will not help. Instead, it will list out in detail how many visitors have come, clicked, liked, or bounced. But if it is going in the right direction – has to be evaluated through KPIs with a Digital marketing expert. However, using the metrics data, and choosing whether you want to advertise via Facebook or Twitter; is what, Product Marketing KPIs will tell you.
The same goes for your team’s performance. If you check the number of hours they have worked with their work completion report, that is what the Metrics give you. Instead, if you need to know if their work is targeted in the right direction, and are the right skills used for the same, then that specific information is what your Product marketing KPIs will give in, This way, you know whether the product is user friendly, affordable and will have a scope of user retention in the near future.
Data when used properly, bring results to the table. Of course, this is not a new fact, but how many of the product marketing managers and marketing teams do this? If you are wondering what is the magic behind Product Marketing KPIs – the best reality is that Performance Marketing can be evaluated, making way for further critical decision making. It is the most relevant action that Saas company can and should use.
For instance, if your Saas company wants to venture into a new location on the globe,
How would you know if that effort is worth it?
How would you know when the investment for it will reach the break even point?
How would you know whether the audience will accept the product?
How do you understand which marketing format and marketing campaign to adopt?
These are still a few thoughts, but there are more, So, if you want to decide what should be the next marketing move for your product – it should be backed with the results shared by data. This data is best broken down by watching the metrics and understanding the insight that the KPIs hint through the numbers. A good digital marketing expert will be able to reason why a certain decision, course of action, and medium of marketing should be taken.
To sum up, Product Marketing KPIs give direction to product marketing teams and digital marketers on what’s next for your fabulous product line.
Once you have read the differences, you may have been able to toss away most of the confusion that these terms surround you. Now, the next phase is to reach behind the lines. Basically, to understand the real meaning of the data and what these key indicators have to convey.
Start with the key indicators and then break them down slowly. For a successful data driven Product Marketing business, keep a tab on your KPIs, note the dashboards, and measure the following:
What is Revenue Goal for Product Marketing?
For every product, expected revenue will be estimated on your metrics chart. This will be the overall outlook depending on the USP of the product and common research done for that specific product line. However, given the untold business environment conditions, the competition, the target audience interest difference, and other unaccounted reasons, the revenue may or may not be deliverable as the metrics promise. Fortunately, the Product Marketing KPIs, bring more clarity to various factors like retention, the cost to sell, acquisition, competitor analysis, and even cross sell in various locations and mediums. Your KPIs will give a better focus on how you can attain your revenue for the whole company and also how to obtain revenue from each target audience, retain and also break down the revenue earned per day, week, and monthly. This keeps product marketers on track with what needs to be done next.
You are doing business for wins and certainly not for losses, right? When you go for online or offline marketing strategies, a lot of leads may come in, but how many leads actually make their way to a sale? This is what Product Marketing KPIs pitches in with leads that can sustain, be retained, and also help you get a loyal customer base faster. Sales are fruitful when the win rates or the successful sales numbers (considered as a win) are going up. Better win rates indicate that the product marketing efforts are moving to the company revenue goal. The Product Marketing KPIs will state the sales data of the marketing team, the product sales, the target audience, and also the competitor sales of similar products. The data will help identify, and compare what are the setbacks, strengths, and opportunities of the company. To get better sales and win rates, the KPIs will showcase the markets that are most applicable for a certain product.
The timing, pattern, and type of a product launch are highly critical for every company. The success of a launch is directly related to the way digital marketers analyze the metrics, and use the Product Marketing KPIs, to understand how to shape the most impactful product launch. This is often the first step of the marketing team’s go to market plan. A proper product launch will ensure that the right communication formats are selected so that product awareness is both knowledgeable and interesting. Some of the Product Marketing KPIs for the product launch would be exciting trial offers, demo stalls at malls, wide social media coverage, catchy feature based advertisements via digital marketing, etc. The KPIs will track the time, frequency, location based traffic, rate of conversion based on age and gender, etc. One of the most noted features of Product Marketing KPIs is the time gap to launch and convert the visibility to sales will be noted. The attribute will help the sales team to understand how, where, and when to focus on the audience for the launch. This will give insight into the audience’s perception, campaign effectiveness, and overall acceptance of the product launch.
The revenue of any product will depend on the sales which ultimately means that there is consistent usage of the product. So, this is indeed a key Product Marketing KPI that every digital marketer should break down and guide the company team. This should be teamwork between your digital marketing team, the product marketing, and the product development team. This is because if a product usage has been affected in a certain month, the KPIs will show. Then reviews and customer service will reveal more details on the difference. For instance, you may have had a fabulous product launch and after six months, the sales to new customers have receded. This is what the metrics will show. Now, the KPIs will showcase various other factors as this could be due to ineffective marketing campaigns, a similar product launch by a competitor if your features are not been stated in your advertisement, or probably people have not recommended your product. There could be varied reasons that may or may not affect customer happiness. Find the relevant reasons with the KPIs, and then the product team can make the needed alterations for a boost in sales.
Have you heard about the NPS Score? It is the Net Promoter Score. The product usage can help understand how frequently the product has been bought. That is not enough though. You have to understand if the word of mouth for your product is on the go. Customers will recommend the product only if they are happy with it. Furthermore, the happiness level or the satisfaction level of the customer has to be checked to have a deeper understanding of the life of the product. The more happiness, the higher level of customer retention, and that is a vital attribute that every product marketing team ought to know. You can get these numbers with surveys, feedback forms, and fun quizzes.
As mentioned above, happiness in product usage will only lead to further buying and even organic online recommendations. You need to keep the loop of buying habits, as that will invariably increase sales and thereby help the company to reach its revenue goals seamlessly. With the key Product Marketing KPIs, you can identify the main product retention factors of the product. It could be the features, the packaging, the product utility, and the pricing, and these critical factors are analyzed by the digital marketing team. Your product marketing KPI will be able to signal if the customer engagement level is also going in a positive direction.
Another vital term is the Product Stickiness Metrics that guide the Product Marketing KPIs. Just like customer retention, if a customer is happy about the product and goes in for a second or repeated buying behavior – that is Product Stickiness. In short, if your customer is satisfied with the product usage experience they stick to the product. This is a key indicator for product sales growth. Digital marketing will help the company identify the pain points and positives via customer feedback, suggestions, and offers, A simple formula used is Daily Active Users and Monthly Active Users Ratio. This will allow the user count can be tracked and the needed rectifications can be done.
Digital Marketing helps product marketing managers stay abreast of the latest product sales growth or recession. This will allow them to align their upcoming short term goals with the overall revenue and company goals that have to be attained yearly. If you are working with a Saas product marketing company, the cues listed below are almost next to essential. Have a look.
Digital Marketers may have heard this term. In fact, it is also called CLV or even CLTV. All mean the same, and just abbreviations that were formulated at various times. This is one of the indicator formulas used to find how each customer or product buyer will spend on the product during the lifetime of the product usage. For example, you may have a customer who has been purchasing your product once every month for the past three years. Whereas, another customer may have been purchasing the same product three times a month for the past two years., Who is a prospective buyer? Who would you love to understand and give more in the long run? Your LTV will help you understand how much the product can earn from each customer during their lifetime usage.
The metrics for this are dependent on two factors: Customer Value and then the Average Customer Lifespan. Multiply the average purchase value by the average quantity of purchases and you get the Customer Value. When you multiply Customer Value by Average Customer Lifespan, then you get the LTV or the CTV. This will give the product marketing team an idea that such a frequency of purchase will help achieve the company goals in a stipulated time.
For most businesses, this is one metric that is considered. It is quite normal that old customers will elve after a while and new ones will join in. So, this cycle will change the way revenue flows in, Product marketers should get to showcase the percentage of fluctuation each month. With the help of digital marketers, the MRR can also spot ways to bring up revenue options in the future. For this, just multiply the average count of customers in a month by the average revenue earned from each customer. This will give the MRR for the company from each product.
Okay, once you have checked the MRR, next you need to work on the ARR too. This is the one aspect that every product or service based company should check. It refers to the yearly revenue that the company has earned from the product line. It projects the repeated earnings that companies earn from customers in the form of subscriptions. By repeated it means that the customer would be paying every month and this sum would account for the annual revenue. You also have to add in the special upgrade fees or any other offer based purchases that customers have done repeatedly in one year.
As the name suggests, this is the expense incurred by the company to attract, and acquire new customers. The metric is then compared with the LTV values to understand the net profit earned from each customer. The cost will include the expenses incurred for advertisement, social media, campaigns, freebies, etc to make the prospective customers aware, build curiosity and ensure that they buy the product. For this, list down the expenses connected with sales and marketing for the product in a certain time period. Add them up. Now divide this by the new customers acquired in the same time period. This will give the CAC value.
We have mentioned this term before. The metric will analyze how happy customers are with your product and whether they will recommend the product to their friends and family. The score can be analyzed with a feedback quiz with a rating from 0 to 10. If they have rated as 9 – 10, then they are called Promoters. Those who fall in the 7-8 category, then they are in the Passive group. The ones below this will be Detractors and they are less likely to recommend the product. To get your NPS, take the difference between the percentage of promoters and detractors.
The next one to note is when the user will stop purchasing and using the products from your company. Here, the data will be collected on the time period of new customers signing up, the time period of usage, and the time of exit. This is not the normal exit time that you calculate for the LTV. The Early churn rate is considered a negative indicator when customers leave your product usage too soon. It could be a single buy, probably because they felt the product did not match their expectations. So, every digital marketing and product marketing team can use such Product Marketing KPIs as red flags to understand the product problems and improve the customer acquisition rate.
Business can be successful only if you are able to retain your customers on a continuous level. This will include various promotions and social media communications that keep your customers engaged always. A good CRR will improve revenue, the goodwill and also help to increase online word of mouth in the long run. It is also another effective Product Marketing KPI to understand the level of customer loyalty. You can calculate CRR for a specified time period, by subtracting the total number of customers in this period from the newly acquired customers in the same time period. Divide the result by the number of customers at the start of this time period. Finally, multiply the result by 100 and that will give you the CRR.
Product Managers have to use Digital Marketing expertise to understand how many online viewers actually take an interest to watch the onboarding product images, videos, and tutorials. This is part of the product awareness process. If your message is engaging, and useful, and portrays the product features in a unique manner, the guide views will increase. This is used for product launches, product upgrades, and any other advertising campaign too.
If your customers have watched or interacted with the complete process of product onboarding, then that will fall in the Guide Completion rate. You need to closely monitor how they interacted, and where they dropped out. This will help to increase the lead conversion for every product marketing effort. Aim to have high completion rates, as that converts into long term sales.
In between the onboarding and the completion rate, the time spent by the visitor to onboard, and understand all the aspects and features of the product is crucial to be noted. Various aspects like when they start viewing the website or mobile app, exit, and then repeatedly get in will be all valuable information, To get the visitor session duration, take the total online sessions and divide by the number of interactive sessions (by the customer). The more the better always.
Moving to the third section of our Product Marketing KPIs, we have the feedback time coming up. Each customer will have a different experience. Taking time to listen to their experiences will be your best lesson towards product improvement and revenue build up. Until you have been working on the quantity factor or the number aspect of the data. Now, quality will actually tell you where you can leverage your services and the subtle aspect that actually make a huge impact on user experience,
Take the feedback from the team, stakeholders, and those who are involved directly or indirectly with the product. They have to give valuable inputs on whether the product marketing is done right, and opinions on certain features, etc. For this, you can ask them to participate in the below forms and interact
Simple sign-up forms where they can sign in and interact, and give feedback about the whole experience.
This is a random walkthrough of the website or the mobile application, whereby the users are allowed to navigate, understand where the CTA buttons are, and be able to understand the total product flow by themselves. If not, their feedback will have a few points to guide the marketing team to improve further. Each channel or medium of technology is different. But overall it should be smooth and communicative, The better the user experience, the better the conversion rate for the product.
Once the internal teams are over, we have to set out to understand what the customers, prospective audience and well wishers think about the product. Take cues from them to improve the marketing pattern and be the competition. So, let’s head to the external qualitative feedback.
Free trials are a part of Product marketing. The Visitor To Free Trial Conversion is the percentage of people who willingly accept your free trial. The more people sign-up, it means that your promotion strategy has been effective. To get the percentage, divide the number of people who signed up by the total number of people who visited the trial program. This KPI will help digital marketing managers understand the promotional marketing process of the company.
SQL here means the Sales Qualified Lead. It indicates the visitors who have come to your product marketing sales funnel. To know the Visitor to SQL Conversion, divide the visitors who were regarded as a lead by the total visitor count.
This comes in after the free trial marketing strategy. If your visitors have come to your sales funnel after being satisfied with the free trial, then that is a positive result of your marketing strategy. Just divide the visitors who come after a free trial by the total visitors who sign up during the same time period.
This is the third type of Product Marketing KPI wherein the visitor feels convinced and becomes your paid buyer right after trying the free trial and entering the sales funnel. So to calculate the Free Trial to Paid Conversions, you need to divide the ones who bought your product after the trial by the total number of visitors who signed up for the free trial for a certain time period.
When looking at the Product Marketing KPIs, the extent of the product usage is a crucial element to consider. As a company, we are certainly looking for one time users, but ones who will stick around, be loyal, and also spread the word of mouth – both offline and online. For this, the product usage metrics need to be looked into
The whole idea behind product marketing is launching the product to the market and keeping satisfied customers in the kitty. This will happen when the product features align with the customer’s expectations. For this, you need to know what your target audience needs. These metrics and the Product Marketing KPIs will help you in this journey.
It is important to track the way the product is used, how often it is being purchased, the age group of buyers, the locations worldwide, etc. The product marketing team should understand which campaigns have worked and which have not. This will further help to strategize cross-sells, upselling patterns, product expansion, upgrades, and much more. Here, you should check the happiness count, the product exit count, and factors that show the frequency of buys. This research may seem indirect to the normal analysis methods, but it helps to keep the product marketing and product development efforts aligned with the company revenue goals and also expansion goals at large.
Product Managers are always on the lookout for the effectiveness of each product, and the revenue yielded from it. The product adoption metrics will help product managers and digital marketers perceive the frequency of people who initiated a sale after using the CTA button on the website or the mobile app.
This Product Marketing KPI will give a picture of how many customers actually adopted the product after a signup or a free trial session. This KPI will indicate the happiness level of your user and how loyal they will turn out to be, To find this, get the number of new users, divide by the total number of users, and then multiply by 100.
If you like a product, you would love to buy it again. The same goes for the logic behind the Feature Adoption rate. The more value added features your product has, the product will have a loyal customer base. To find this, divide the active users for a particular product per month by the users who get into the website for a specific period of time.
The period taken by the customer to find the real worth of the product is the Time to Value. The lesser time it takes to prove the product value to your target customer, the better for the product revenue goal. So, faster value addition will lead to having a loyal customer base who will use it for a long time and also spread the word of mouth.
The real time is when the user actually decides that the free trial was satisfactory and it is time to move into a paid and a real buy. This is where a user has been activated and you can pretty sure that this is a regular user.
The Aha moment is an interesting Product Marketing KPI considered by digital marketing experts. It is the moment of realization and happiness exhibited by the user when they decide to actually purchase the product. This happens when they are convinced about the same,
This section is connected with communications related to the product. It means that if you have a product, it should be able to explain and excite people with its features and utility factor. The more people are able to connect with the product users, the more engagement will be secured. It is very important that a product gets product engagement as that will help to convince people to be loyal customers for a prolonged period of time.
Here digital marketers will have to consider various Key Product Engagement KPI Indicators to ensure that the sales and marketing efforts for the product are aligned with the company goals.
MAU will list out the unique visitors who use the company product or service every month. To find it, just add the unique visitors you get every month and divide it by 12.
WAU will list out the unique visitors who use the company product or service every week. To find it, just add the unique visitors you get every week and divide it by 7
DAU will list out the unique visitors who use the company product or service every day. To find it, just add the unique visitors you get every day and divide it by the number of days you have every month.
Being sticky to the product means that the customer is happy with the product and will use it again and again. In other words, this is another term that signifies Product Customer Satisfaction
There are various ways to understand the level of the stickiness of a product. A few KPIs that are considered:
Once a visitor enters a website, they will check through one page and then navigate through the others too. The more pages visited during each visit, means that the website navigation is good, the CTA is effective and the website is engaging the whole. To find the pages, count the pageviews and divide them by the total number of sessions.
Here, the clicks per visitor will determine how effective and engaging the product sales process on the website is on the whole. To assess this, divide the clicks by the total session count.
Every user who comes to the product will take an action or may not. This has to be monitored by dividing the total number of actions by the total session count.
If the values found are relatively high, it means that your product website is engaging and going in the right direction for sales growth.
Wrapping up
Understanding the customer perception of the product and then marketing will lead to product marketing success. Often, companies focus a lot on the features, but the usability and comfort level is unknown. Here, Digital Marketing plays a crucial role in reading the Product Marketing KPIs so that the work is more strategic and customized to align the efforts to company goals and customer satisfaction. Hope this blog /helped you get a detailed insight on what is the true essence of Product Marketing KPIs and how to utilize them properly.
Founder & CEO @ LogicRanks, (Simply Put, I’m in charge of this exciting venture and we’ve some EPIC blogs taking shape). Gotcha 14+ year entrepreneurial ride where I have donned the "Strategic digital marketer and multi-faceted business consultant” cap. That got me unfolding these awesome blogs published here. Nonetheless, my versatile experience & learnings in real-time, proven digital marketing ventures & notable business journeys are wrapped with innovation, research, and result-oriented accolades. Stay with me on this journey :)
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