KPIs not only help you know whether your campaign is on track or not, but also show you 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 is a KPI and why should it be measured in social media promotion?

Before going into each specific KPI, let's clarify the concept. KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are effective measurement indicators, set up to evaluate the success of an activity compared to the original goal. In marketing, KPIs help businesses know whether their promotional campaigns are reaching the right customers, generating revenue, and are worth the costs.

Measuring KPIs in social media promotion is especially important because:

• Social media has the characteristic of “real-time”. If you don't track it regularly, a small mistake in targeting or content can quickly cause your budget to "evaporate"
• KPIs help businesses see the big picture: From coverage, engagement to conversion rates and revenue
• More importantly, KPIs are the basis for improvement. Instead of guessing, you will know exactly what needs to change, from content, images, to target strategy

In other words, without KPIs, promoting on social media is just “throwing money out the window”.

08 Social Media KPIs You Cannot Ignore

Each social media platform provides its own data system, but to avoid getting confused by too many indicators, businesses should focus on core KPIs that can be applied to all channels. Here are the 08 most important KPIs that you need to closely monitor to evaluate Marketing effectiveness:

1. Reach - Content Coverage

Before we talk about conversions or revenue, the first step is how many people have seen your content. Reach is a measure of how many unique users have seen your post or ad:

• What it means in practice: Reach tells you how widely your message is 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 attractive, not optimized for the algorithm (for example on Facebook, TikTok) or the advertising budget is not suitable.

2. Engagement - Level of interaction

Having a high reach does not necessarily mean success, what is important is how customers react to that content. Engagement includes likes, comments, shares, saves, or any action that shows interest:

• Practical meaning: High engagement shows that the content hits the right customer insights. For example, a video that receives many comments sharing real-life experiences proves that it creates a connection
• How to use: Businesses can compare engagement rate = total interactions / total reach. This is a useful index to evaluate the "attractiveness" of the content, regardless of advertising budget

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

If the post has a link (e.g. Landing Page, product website), 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:

• What it means in practice: CTR tells you whether your content is “action-provoking” enough. A good headline, eye-catching image and a clear CTA (Call-to-Action) will boost CTR significantly
• For example: A campaign with 100,000 impressions, but only 500 clicks (CTR = 0.5%) suggests you need to optimize your CTA or tweak your messaging to better suit your audience

4. Conversion Rate - Conversion Rate

After a customer clicks on a link, the most important thing is whether they take the next action: fill out a form, buy a product, download an app… Conversion Rate measures this final effect:

• Practical meaning: This is a KPI directly linked to revenue. A campaign with a high CTR but low Conversion means that the customer is interested but not convinced enough to take action.
• Application: SMEs can track conversion rates to optimize Landing Pages, sales messages or purchasing processes

5. CPM & CPC - Advertising Cost

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

• CPM (Cost per Mille): Cost for 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 CPM is too high, it may be because the target audience is not accurate or the ad content is not attractive

6. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - Cost of Acquiring New Customers

CAC is the total marketing and sales costs divided by the number of new customers acquired. This is one of the “vital” KPIs to know if the campaign is really 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 not effective
• Application: SMEs can combine CAC with Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to know if the investment is worth it

7. Sentiment Analysis - Customer Sentiment Index

In addition to “hard” numbers, what customers say and feel about the brand are also important KPIs. Sentiment Analysis measures the percentage of positive, neutral or negative responses:

• Practical significance: A post with thousands of comments but if most of them are negative, it is not a success
• Application: Businesses can use social listening tools (such as Buzzmetrics, YouNet Media) to monitor customer emotions, thereby adjusting content and campaigns

8. ROI (Return on Investment) - Return on Investment

Finally, the “ultimate” KPI in every marketing campaign is ROI. This is an indicator that tells you how much profit you make for every dollar spent.

• Simple calculation: ROI = (Revenue – Cost) / Cost x 100%
• Practical meaning: A positive ROI means the campaign is profitable, a negative ROI means it is losing money. This is the index for the management to decide to continue or stop the campaign

Measurement methods for social media KPIs

After understanding the important indicators to monitor on social media, the next question is: How to collect and analyze these data to promptly adjust strategies? 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 like reach, impressions, follower growth, and engagement.

For example, on Meta Business Suite, the Insight section lets you see details about how many people saw your content, how often it was shown, and engagement rates. TikTok and LinkedIn also have similar analytics panels, allowing you to compare each post and adjust the content.

The advantage of these tools is that they are free and directly from the platform, but the downside is that you will have to log in and analyze each channel separately, which is quite time-consuming if the business operates on 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 your shared links, you can see exactly which channels, and even which campaigns, are driving the most traffic and conversions.

In GA4, the section Acquisition → Traffic acquisition → Session source/medium allows you to filter data to see whether users are coming from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok, and analyze their behavior after they visit, such as time spent, pages viewed, and bounce rate. This is especially important if you want to demonstrate ROI from social media.

However, to get the most out of GA4, you need to set up UTMs and configure GA4 correctly from the start. This requires a bit of technical knowledge, otherwise your measurements may be inaccurate. In addition, analyzing data effectively is also a difficult problem because there is too much complex data.

GTG CRM

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

This is an all-in-one AI-powered 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.

Instead of having to use each individual tool, you can see right in GTG CRM the number of reach, CTR or CPC, ... from posts or ads.

In addition, the AI integrated in GTG CRM also helps you create multi-platform posts and photos quickly.

In short, if you're just starting out, native tools are enough to get you started. If you want to measure 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.

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

Conclusion

Promoting on social media 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 comprehensive picture of marketing effectiveness.

For SMEs, mastering and tracking social media KPIs not only helps you allocate your budget appropriately, but also helps improve content quality, increase conversion rates and ultimately maximize revenue. Instead of having to struggle with many separate and time-consuming applications, GTG CRM offers an all-in-one solution, helping you manage data, measure effectiveness and deploy automated marketing on a single platform.