KPI Reporting: and using AI to track KPIs in 2024

Tracking KPIs can be crucial as both a measure for knowing how your company is performing and to keep your team aligned and focused on your goals. With all the advancements in AI you may have wondered how it can be used to help with your KPI tracking and analytics. Here at Go Insights we utilise AI to help you go beyond dashboards to automate tracking and monitoring of your most important KPIs. We surface key changes and trends in your data, so you instantly know what's moving the needle. No more guessing why your numbers jumped or dropped, or spending hours pouring over spreadsheets and dashboards. Get the clarity you need to make smart marketing decisions. This guide will cover everything you need to know about KPI reporting in 2024 - with Go Insights as your copilot.

What is KPI reporting?

KPI reporting refers to the process of tracking and monitoring key performance indicators, which are metrics that measure how well your business or teams are performing. As a marketer in 2024, you know how important data-driven decisions are. KPI reporting gives you the insights you need to see what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve.

Utilizing a KPI dashboard or report allows you to visually monitor and track your KPIs instantly:

What Are KPIs and Why Measure Them?

Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are metrics used to determine how well a company is achieving its key business objectives. For marketers, KPIs measure the success and impact of marketing campaigns and initiatives. Tracking KPIs is crucial because as the saying goes 'what gets measured gets managed'. By monitoring your KPIs regularly, you gain valuable insights into what’s working, what’s not, and where you need to make changes.

What Are The Benefits Of KPI Tracking?

There are several benefits to actively measuring and monitoring your marketing KPIs:

Identify opportunities for improvement. See where your metrics are lagging and make adjustments to boost performance. For example, if traffic from social media is lower than expected, you may need to be more active on those channels.
Track progress towards goals. Ensure your marketing strategy is moving the needle on key goals like increasing brand awareness, driving more traffic, or generating leads. Make sure you’re on track and take corrective action if needed.
Measure marketing ROI. Determine if your marketing spend and resources are generating a good return on investment. See which campaigns and channels are most effective so you can allocate your budget accordingly.
Spot trends and patterns. Notice trends in your metrics over time to gain useful insights. See how factors like seasonality, economic changes or current events may be impacting your KPIs. Use those learnings to optimize your future marketing plans.
Provide data-driven decisions. Rely on concrete metrics and insights instead of guesses or intuition when making important marketing decisions. KPIs give you the facts you need to choose the right path forward.
Gain stakeholder buy-in. Share regular KPI reports with executives, managers and key stakeholders to demonstrate the impact of your marketing. This helps justify your budget and resources while also keeping everyone aligned on priorities.

Using a tool like Go Insights to automatically track and monitor your KPIs provides all these benefits and more. You'll gain data-powered insights to optimize your marketing without needing a huge analytics team. Focus on what matters - driving results and exceeding your key business goals. Measuring KPIs is how you'll get there.

Keep your KPIs on track

Get a clear overview of how you are tracking towards your goals, what is changing in your data and why.

Choosing the right KPIs (and the right amount)

The key is to choose KPIs that actually matter for your business and marketing goals. It's important to strike a balance between having enough data to make informed decisions, but not being overwhelmed by too many metrics. We recommend focusing on the most relevant and impactful KPIs that align with your business goals. For example, Transactions, organic new users, or conversions specific to your onboarding process may be important metrics to track for a quarter. Whereas so called ‘vanity metrics’ such as Total sessions, AOV, or Bounce rate will be less effective.

At Go Insights), we recommend setting between 4-8 high level KPIs to track.

The selected KPIs should then be discussed and revised every quarter to ensure they reflect current and future business goals.

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What makes a good KPI?

For your KPIs to be effective, ensure your objectives and goals are SMART

Setting SMART KPIs:

Specific: Each KPI should clearly define what it measures and why it's important.
Measurable: The KPI must be quantifiable using accessible data.
Achievable: You must be able to take actions to meet the KPI.
Relevant: The KPI must align with organizational goals and objectives.
Time-bound: The KPI should be reported frequently enough to enable timely adjustments.

(OOI 'the SMART' acronym was created in the 80's by George T. Doran)

When finalizing a KPI, ask:

What is your organization's vision and strategy?
Which metrics indicate you're pursuing your vision and strategy?
What benchmarks will you use?
How could the KPIs be manipulated, and how will you prevent that?
How can I track these KPI?

For example, "Increase sales leads by 10% during the next financial quarter" is a SMART KPI: it's specific, measurable, achievable within a time frame, and relevant to sales goals.

Common marketing KPIs include:

Website Traffic: The number of visitors to your website shows how much interest there is in your brand and content. Analyse trends in traffic sources, pages visited and bounce rates to see how engaging your site is. Traffic KPIs give you an overview of how your digital marketing campaigns are performing.
Conversion Rates: Whether it’s newsletter signups, contact form submissions or purchases, track how many visitors complete a desired action. Improve conversion rates by optimising your site for mobile, simplifying forms and checkout processes, and targeting high-intent traffic.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Knowing your CAC helps determine how much to spend to gain a new customer. Calculate your CAC by dividing your total marketing spend by the number of new customers acquired in a given period. Aim for a CAC that balances sustainable growth with healthy profit margins.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Your CLV represents how much revenue you can generate from a customer over the lifetime of your relationship. It’s calculated by multiplying your average transaction value by your customer retention rate. Focus marketing direction on attracting high-value, long-term customers that will yield a higher CLV.
Return on Investment: At the end of the day, marketing ROI determines if your efforts are genuinely paying off. Calculate your return on investment (ROI) by dividing the revenue or profit from a campaign by the total cost of the campaign. A positive ROI means the campaign was worthwhile. A negative ROI signals it’s time to reevaluate your strategy.

Although these are common KPIs they might not be the right ones for your organization. Every business is unique and so will have a unique set of KPIs, make sure you take time to work out yours so you can focus on the ones that truly matter for sustainable success. We recommend giving Roman Pichler's article on choosing the right KPI's a read, here he covers how using your product road map and product strategy can help determine KPIs.

Cascading KPIs: Organisation to team to individual

KPIs don't need to only be used at an organization level, they can be applied to departments, teams, individuals, and even projects. When setting individual goals and KPIs, ensure they align with the team's overall strategy, which in turn aligns with the organization's overall strategy.

Defining an employee's goal based on an organization-wide KPI ensures their daily work directly supports organizational success. This links employee performance to organizational achievement.

By cascading high-level KPIs down through the organization, everyone can see how their work impacts the company's strategic objectives. This clarity of purpose helps boost motivation, productivity and ultimately, overall business results.

Methods for Tracking KPI Performance Over Time

Regular reporting

The most effective way to track your KPIs over time is through regular reporting. Set up automated KPI reports that provide a snapshot of your key metrics on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. These reports allow you to spot trends, see how you’re progressing towards goals, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing strategies.

With tools like Go Insights, you can schedule reports to be delivered directly to your inbox on the cadence you choose. The reports provide an easy-to-read overview of your KPIs, as well as insights into the factors driving changes in the data. This eliminates the need for you to manually analyze spreadsheets or dashboards to understand your performance.

[image: KPI report]

Dashboard views

In addition to automated reporting, interactive dashboards provide a visual way to monitor your KPIs in real-time. With one glance, you should be able to check on the health of your marketing efforts.

The best dashboards will allow you to add or remove KPIs and goal parameters. They provide time period comparisons, goal lines, and alerts to notify you of meaningful changes. With an intuitive dashboard, you’ll find yourself checking in frequently to get an up-to-the-minute pulse on your performance.

[image: KPI dash]

Historical comparisons

To determine if your strategy is truly moving the needle over the long run, compare your current KPI values to historical data. Look at year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter, and month-over-month trends to see the bigger picture of your progress. Some metrics may fluctuate from period to period, so a longer historical view is needed to identify sustained growth or areas needing improvement.

[image: KPI data comparison]

Combining KPI metrics, tracking & insights

[Image: to show a dashboard of KPIs with goals + insights visible]

KPI metric monitoring, like the image shown below, can be useful, but when you combine plotting the charts with KPI goal-tracking and KPI insights - that's when the magic starts to happen.

KPI tracking can enable:

Tracking KPI progress over time, daily and weekly check-ins
Forecasting predictions, such as ad spend, revenue projection, or conversions
Celebrating wins with colleagues and clients

KPI Insights can enable:

Deep knowledge of KPIs, trends, anomalies, and how they are changing over time
Root cause analysis - when data changes, understand the related metrics and dimensions that are attributed to the change
Reacting quickly to positive or negative changes within your key data

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Automating KPI Reporting in 2024 With AI

In 2024, AI and automation have transformed how companies track and analyze their KPIs. With AI-powered solutions like Go Insights, your key metrics and insights are automatically generated for you.

As a marketer, KPI reporting is essential for understanding what’s working and optimizing your efforts. But compiling reports and analyzing campaign data used to require hours of tedious work. Now, AI does the heavy lifting for you by:

Aggregating data from all your marketing tools and channels in one place. No more exporting data from various sources and trying to make sense of it all.
Choosing the most important KPIs to focus on based on your business and marketing objectives.

Moving into 2025 and beyond, AI will continue to transform KPI reporting for marketers. Here are a few trends to keep an eye on:

Deeper insights from data modeling. AI algorithms will uncover patterns and correlations in your data that no human analyst could find. This will yield insights into how different tactics and campaigns truly impact your bottom line.

Predictive analytics and forecasting. AI will enable marketers to predict future performance based on historical data and current trends. This allows you to be proactive and adjust strategies ahead of time instead of reacting after the fact.

Automated action recommendations. Based on its analysis of your data and objectives, AI systems will begin recommending specific actions for you to take. This could include changing ad copy, budgets, or targeting. Over time, AI may even execute some optimizations autonomously.

As AI takes on more of the reporting and analysis workload, marketers will have more time to spend on creative, big picture strategy and testing new ideas. AI-powered KPI reporting will transform marketing from a reactive function to a proactive driver of business growth. Those marketers who learn to leverage these tools effectively will gain a significant competitive edge in 2025 and beyond.

The AI has studied millions of other businesses and knows which metrics really matter.

Continuously monitoring your KPIs for any significant changes, then alerting you to the insights and providing explanations for what caused the fluctuations. You get notifications about both positive and negative trends so you can take action quickly.
Generating customized reports and data visualizations on demand so you have the information you need at your fingertips to make data-driven decisions.
Providing predictive analytics to help you forecast future KPI performance and set optimal targets.

In 2024, AI-powered KPI reporting solutions give marketers superpowers. You get a crystal-clear view of what’s working, what’s not, and what you can improve in your marketing—all without having to become a data scientist. AI does the analysis for you so you can spend more time optimizing your campaigns and less time crunching numbers. The future of marketing is AI, and it’s here to make your life easier.

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FAQs on KPI Reporting and Measurement

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are metrics used to determine how well a company is achieving key business objectives. For marketers, KPIs revolve around metrics like traffic, leads, sales, and customer satisfaction. Reporting on KPIs helps provide insights into what’s working and not working in your marketing efforts.

How do I choose the right KPIs to track?

Focus on KPIs that align with your key marketing goals and company objectives. If lead generation is a priority, track metrics like website traffic, email signups, and sales leads. If customer retention matters most, monitor customer satisfaction, churn rate, and repeat purchases. Choose a balanced mix of KPIs—don’t rely only on vanity metrics like social media likes that don’t directly impact revenue or loyalty.

How frequently should I report on KPIs?

For important KPIs, aim for weekly or monthly reporting. This allows you to spot trends and make adjustments quickly. For KPIs that change more gradually, quarterly or biannual reporting may suffice. The key is to report on KPIs frequently enough that you can take meaningful action based on the insights.

How can I automate my KPI reporting?

Solutions like Go Insights has automatic KPI tracking, which uncover insights to save you time. Software integrations pull data from your marketing tools, CRM, and analytics platforms to provide a single source of truth for your KPIs. Automated reports can be scheduled and customized to the needs of your stakeholders. Alerts notify you of meaningful changes in KPIs so you can take action.

KPI reporting and measurement provides the pulse of your marketing efforts. By choosing the right KPIs, reporting on them consistently, and leveraging automation, you'll gain the insights needed to optimize your marketing and drive better business outcomes. Let us know if you have any other questions on streamlining your KPI reporting!

Wrapping up

So there you have it - your guide to KPI reporting in 2024. By now you should have a solid understanding of how to choose the right KPIs, track you KPIs properly, and use them to drive real results. Just imagine how much time you'll save by automating all that data analysis with a tool like Go Insights. Get those key insights into your metrics so you can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.