KPIs not only help you know if your campaign is on the right track, but also point out where you need to adjust to achieve better results. In this article, we will explore the most important KPIs when promoting on social media and their practical meaning.

What are KPIs and why are they necessary for measurement in social media promotion?

Before going into each specific KPI, let's clarify the concept. KPI (Key Performance Indicator) are performance metrics, established to evaluate the success of an activity against its initial goals. In marketing, KPIs help businesses know whether their promotional campaigns are reaching the right customers, generating revenue, and whether they are worth the cost.

What are KPIs? Why are they important?

Measuring KPIs in social media marketing is especially important because:

• Social media has the characteristic of being "real-time". If you don't monitor regularly, a small mistake in targeting or content can cause your budget to "evaporate" quickly. KPIs help businesses see the big picture: From reach and engagement to conversion rates and revenue. More importantly, KPIs are the foundation for improvement. Instead of guesswork, you'll know exactly what needs changing, from content, images, to targeting strategy

In other words, without KPIs, social media advertising is just "throwing money away".

8 Social Media KPIs You Can't Ignore

Each social media platform provides its own metrics system, but to avoid getting overwhelmed by too many metrics, businesses should focus on core KPIs that can be applied across all channels. These are the 8 most important KPIs that you need to closely monitor to evaluate marketing effectiveness:

1. Reach - Content Coverage Before talking about conversions or revenue, the first step is how many people have seen your content. Reach is a metric that measures the number of unique users who see your post or advertisement:

• Practical Meaning: Reach indicates the ability of your message to spread. For example, a post with a reach of 50,000 means that 50,000 people have been exposed to that content at least once.
• When to pay attention: If the reach is low, the content may not be engaging enough, may not be optimized for algorithms (e.g., on Facebook, TikTok), or the advertising budget may not be appropriate.

2. Engagement - Level of interaction

High reach doesn't necessarily guarantee success; what's important is how customers react to the content. Engagement includes likes, comments, shares, saves, or any action that shows interest:

• Practical meaning: High engagement shows that the content resonates with customer insights. For example, a video receiving many comments sharing real-life experiences demonstrates that it creates a connection
• How to use: Businesses can compare engagement rate = total interactions / total reach. This is a useful metric to assess the "engagement" of content, regardless of advertising budget.

3. CTR (Click Through Rate) - Click-Through Rate

If the post includes a link (e.g., Landing Page, product website), then CTR is one of the most important KPIs. This is the percentage of people who clicked on the link divided by the total number of impressions:

• Practical Meaning: CTR indicates whether your content is compelling enough to "stimulate action". A good headline, eye-catching images, and a clear CTA (Call-to-Action) will significantly increase the CTR.
• Example: A campaign with 100,000 impressions but only 500 clicks (CTR = 0.5%) shows you need to optimize the CTA or adjust the message to better suit your customers.

4. Conversion Rate

After a customer clicks on a link, the most important thing is whether they take the next action: filling out a form, making a purchase, downloading an app, etc. Conversion Rate measures this final effect:

• Practical Significance: This is a KPI directly linked to revenue. A campaign with a high CTR but low conversion means that customers are interested but not yet convinced to take action.
• Applications: SMEs can track conversion rates to optimize landing pages, sales messages, or the purchasing process.

5. CPM & CPC - Advertising Cost

When running ads on social media, you need to pay attention to the cost:

• CPM (Cost per Mille): Cost per 1,000 impressions
• CPC (Cost per Click): Cost per click
• Practical meaning: CPM and CPC help you know whether your budget is being used effectively or not. For example, if the CPM is too high, it may be due to inaccurate targeting or unappealing ad content

6. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - Cost of acquiring new customers

CAC is the total marketing and sales cost divided by the number of new customers acquired. This is one of the “vital” KPIs to know if a campaign is truly profitable:

• Practical meaning: If you spend 200,000 VND to get a customer to buy a 150,000 VND product, then the campaign is clearly ineffective.
• Application: SMEs can combine CAC with Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to know if the investment is worthwhile.

7. Sentiment Analysis - Customer Sentiment Index

Besides the "hard" numbers, what customers say and feelabout the brand is also an important KPI. Sentiment Analysis measures the percentage of positive, neutral, or negative responses:

• Practical Significance: A post may have thousands of comments, but if the majority are negative, it's not a success.
• Applications: Businesses can use social listening tools (such as Buzzmetrics, YouNet Media) to track customer sentiment, thereby adjusting content and campaigns.

8. ROI (Return on Investment)

Finally, the “ultimate” KPI in any marketing campaign is ROI. This is an indicator showing: How much profit you make for every dollar spent.

• Simple calculation: ROI = (Revenue – Costs) / Costs x 100%
• Practical meaning: A positive ROI indicates a profitable campaign, a negative ROI means a loss. This is the metric for management to decide to continue or stop the campaign

Methods to Measure Social Media KPIs

After understanding the important metrics to monitor on social media, the next question is: How to collect and analyze this data in order to adjust the strategy in a timely manner? The answer lies in the measurement tools that you can refer to below:

Native Platforms

With native platforms like Meta Business Suite for Facebook and Instagram, TikTok Analytics or LinkedIn Analytics, you can directly track basic metrics such as reach, impressions, follower growth, and engagement.

For example, on Meta Business Suite, the Insight allows you to see details of the number of people who have seen your content, the frequency of impressions, and the engagement rate. TikTok and LinkedIn also have similar analytics, helping you compare each post and adjust content.

The advantage of these tools is that they are free and directly from the platform, but the disadvantage is that you will have to log in and analyze each channel individually, which is quite time-consuming if the business operates across multiple platforms.

Google Analytics (GA4)

Google Analytics (GA4) is an indispensable tool when you want to evaluate the quality of traffic from social networks to your website. By attaching UTM tracking to shared links, you can know exactly which channel, or even campaign, brings the most traffic and conversions. In GA4, the section Acquisition → Traffic acquisition → Session source/medium allows you to filter data to see if users came from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok, and analyze their behavior after visiting, such as time spent, number of pages viewed, and bounce rate. This is especially important if you want to demonstrate the ROI effectiveness from social media.



GA4 customer tracking interface

However, to make good use of GA4, you need to set up UTM and configure GA4 correctly from the start. This requires a a bit of technical knowledge, otherwise the measurement results may be inaccurate. Furthermore, analyzing data effectively is also a difficult problem because there is so much complex data involved.

GTG CRM

For small and medium-sized enterprises in Vietnam, a more comprehensive option is GTG CRM.



GTG CRM - An all-in-one AI-integrated marketing platform with many features

This is an all-in-one AI-integrated marketing platform that allows you to connect multiple social media channels, schedule and create posts, manage multi-channel messaging, and especially track KPIs centrally in a single dashboard.



GTG CRM's intelligent AI helps you create multi-channel advertising content

Instead of using each tool separately, you can see directly in GTG CRM the reach, CTR, or CPC, etc. from your posts or ads.



GTG CRM provides a dashboard for detailed reports on multi-channel advertising effectiveness

In addition, AI integrated into GTG CRM helps you quickly create posts and images across multiple platforms.



Creating cross-platform content with AI is easy

In short, if you're just starting out, the native tools are enough to get you started. If you want to evaluate traffic and conversions, Google Analytics will give you a more comprehensive view. But if you want to save time, manage centrally, and turn data into concrete business actions, GTG CRM is the optimal solution for SMEs.

Analyzing 5 important metrics when running Google Ads

If you're still wondering which metrics to track for each social media platform, SEMRush has compiled a detailed guide to help you easily identify and select the most important KPIs to measure campaign effectiveness.



Key metrics to track for each platform provided by SEMRush

Source: SEMRush

Conclusion

Social media promotion is not just about posting and running ads, but more importantly, measuring effectiveness through KPIs. From Reach, Engagement, CTR to Conversion and ROI - Each metric is a “piece” in the overall picture of marketing effectiveness. For SMEs, mastering and tracking social media KPIs not only helps you allocate budgets rationally, but also supports improving content quality, increasing conversion rates, and ultimately maximizing revenue. Instead of struggling with multiple separate and time-consuming applications, GTG CRM offers an all-in-one solution, helping you manage data, measure effectiveness, and implement automated marketing on a single platform.