Find the right KPIs for your business. This guide provides examples, templates and practical advice to help you define the key performance indicators that matter most for your organization and teams.
Let’s start with the basics. A key performance indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific strategic objective. Business leaders and senior executives use KPIs to judge the effectiveness of their efforts and make better informed decisions.
KPIs vs Metrics
What’s the difference between a KPI and a metric?
KPIs represent how you’re performing against strategic goals. And by goals, we mean specific business outcomes, such as targeted quarterly revenue or targeted new customers per month.
Metrics support KPIs by representing the tactical processes or actions necessary to achieve the KPIs. Metrics track and measure the success against targets for specific actions such as monthly brochure downloads or store visits.
In this guide, we’ve identified and prioritized the most impactful key performance indicators examples for each department. Use the table of contents below to find the KPI examples most relevant to your organization and teams.
Sales leaders and their teams need to track the key performance indicators that help them close more orders. Below are the 15 essential sales KPI examples:
Project managers need to keep projects on time and on budget while also ensuring a high quality outcome. That’s why the 15 key performance indicators examples below focus on timeliness, budget and quality.
Marketing leaders need to track KPIs which enable them to measure their progress against clearly defined goals. The 15 marketing KPI examples below cover all phases of the customer funnel and can be accurately tracked using modern marketing analytics.
Service and support teams should focus on KPIs that measure response times. But, like the 15 key performance indicators examples below, they should also have a clear view of the customer base and longer term, preventative KPIs such as employee engagement and knowledge base articles.
Financial teams have no shortage of ratios and metrics to track. Finance managers and CFO’s should use a financial analytics tool to focus on margin, expense, revenue and cash management as shown in the 15 key finance KPI examples below.
HR managers are primarily concerned with 3 main areas: workforce management, compensation and recruitment. You can use a people analytics tool to track and analyze the 35 key performance indicators examples below:
Workforce Management KPIs:
Absenteeism rate
ROI of outsourcing
Succession planning rate
Open/closed grievances
Promotion rate
Time to productivity
Successor gap rate
Worker composition by gender, experience, and tenure
IT managers should track the on-going stream of support tickets and downtime. They should also track the projects and the team that will proactively reduce the number of these tickets in the future as shown in the top-15 IT KPI examples below.
Social media managers should have KPIs that represent reach, engagement, and conversion to revenue. The 15 social media key performance indicators examples below should be applied both as totals and for each social media platform that your organization is active on.
Who, what, how. Be clear about who the audience is, what they want, and how they’re going to use the KPIs. This means working with your stakeholders to identify the core KPIs that map directly to their goals and strategy.
Be SMART. This popular acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. This is a useful touchstone whenever you’re considering whether a metric should be a key performance indicator. SMART KPI examples are KPIs such as “revenue per region per month” or “new customers per quarter”.
Iterate and evolve. Over time, see how you or your audience are using the set of KPIs and if you find that certain ones aren’t relevant, remove or replace them.
Social Share of Voice (SSoV)
Total Reach
Total Impressions
Followers or Fans or Subscribers
Audience Growth Rate
Share Rate (Shares or ReTweets)
Interest Rate (Likes, Reactions, Favorites)
Response Rate (Comments, Replies)
Key Post or Hashtag Reach
Link Clicks
Site Traffic From Social (By Platform)
Conversions From Social
Conversion Rate From Social
Revenue From Social
Social Program ROI