Google Ads now converts at 6.05% on average, more than double Facebook's 2.72%. Email open rates have climbed to 42%, but Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates that number. TikTok leads social engagement at 5.95%, while Instagram has dropped 30% year-over-year. This guide covers the KPIs that actually matter for each channel, with current benchmarks to measure against.

Channel Comparison at a Glance

SEO KPIs

SEO takes patience. You won't see results for 3-6 months, but the payoff compounds over time. Unlike paid channels where traffic stops when the budget does, organic rankings keep working around the clock. Focus on these five metrics:

Organic Traffic

Your north star. Healthy sites grow 8-10% year-over-year. Flat or declining traffic? Check for algorithm updates, technical issues, or competitors outranking you on key terms. Sudden drops often point to indexing problems or manual penalties, both worth investigating immediately.

Keyword Rankings

Position #1 captures about 28% of clicks. Position #10 gets roughly 2.5%. The difference between page one and page two is effectively invisible, page two results get less than 1% of clicks combined. Track your money keywords weekly, everything else monthly.

Organic CTR

According to HubSpot's marketing data, average CTR across all positions is around 13%. If yours is lower, your title tags and meta descriptions need work. Test different approaches: questions, numbers, and power words tend to perform well. A title like "7 Proven Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment" will outperform "Cart Abandonment Tips" every time.

Conversions from Organic

Traffic without conversions is vanity. E-commerce sites average 1.8% conversion rate from organic; B2B ranges from 2-6% depending on the offer. If you're hitting traffic goals but conversions lag, the problem is usually landing page experience or targeting the wrong keywords (informational vs. transactional intent).

Backlink Growth

Quality over quantity. One link from a relevant, authoritative site beats 100 from random directories. Track new referring domains monthly and watch for spammy link spikes that could trigger penalties. The best links come from original research, data studies, and genuinely useful tools.

Paid Advertising KPIs

Google Ads

Google Ads had a strong 2024. According to WordStream's latest benchmarks, average conversion rates hit 6.05%, up from previous years, with 65% of industries seeing improvements. Performance Max campaigns are driving much of this, though they require careful monitoring since Google controls most optimization decisions.
‍

• ROAS: Your ultimate success metric. Calculate by dividing revenue by ad spend. A 4:1 ratio is solid for most industries; e-commerce often targets 3:1 minimum.
• Conversion Rate: 6.05% average. Legal services lead at 9.17%; real estate trails at 3.52%. Dentists and healthcare providers typically see 5-7%.
• Cost Per Click: $5.26 average. Attorneys pay $10.67; arts and entertainment pays $1.72. B2B software often lands between $3-8 depending on keyword competition.
• CTR: 6.66% average. Anything below 2% needs attention, low CTR tanks your Quality Score and raises costs.
• Quality Score: Aim for 7+. Higher scores mean lower CPCs and better ad positions. Scores below 5 indicate problems with ad relevance, landing page experience, or expected CTR.
• Cost Per Lead: LocaliQ data shows $70.11 average. Varies wildly: career services averages $132.95, automotive just $40.75. SaaS companies typically see $50-150 depending on product complexity.

Facebook/Meta Ads

Based on recent Facebook Ads data, the platform converts at 2.72% on average, less than half of Google's rate. But CPCs are lower, making it viable for awareness and remarketing. The platform excels at top-of-funnel campaigns and retargeting warm audiences.
‍

• Traffic CPC: $0.70 (down from $0.77 last year)
• Lead CPC: $1.92 average. Financial services and insurance run higher at $3-5.
• CTR: Ranges from 0.88% (apparel) to 1.72% (legal). Video ads typically see 20-30% higher CTR than static images.
• Frequency: Watch this metric. Above 3-4 for cold audiences signals ad fatigue; 7+ for retargeting is usually fine.

Social Media KPIs

Engagement rates vary dramatically by platform. Comparing your Instagram performance to TikTok benchmarks will only frustrate you, the numbers are worlds apart:

What these numbers mean: Instagram and Facebook engagement has collapsed over the past two years. Sprout Social's 2025 research confirms that brands are posting less but engaging more, quality over quantity is winning. If organic reach matters to you, TikTok and LinkedIn are where the action is. On Instagram, Reels now make up 38% of all posts, and collaborative posts generate 3.4x more engagement than standard ones. Adapt or accept diminishing returns.

Metrics That Actually Matter

• Engagement Rate: (Likes + Comments + Shares) / Followers × 100. The single best indicator of content resonance.
• Follower Growth Rate: TikTok brands average 21% monthly growth; Instagram averages 0.98%. Track percentage growth, not raw numbers.
• Reach: Unique users who saw your content. More useful than impressions for understanding true audience size.
• Click-Through Rate: Clicks to your site divided by impressions. The metric that connects social activity to business results.
• Share of Voice: Your mentions vs. competitors. Useful for tracking brand awareness and campaign impact over time.

Email Marketing KPIs

The Apple Privacy Problem

Since iOS 15, Apple's Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images and marks emails as "opened" even when they're not. This affects about 46% of email clients. Result: open rates are inflated, sometimes dramatically. Click rate is now your most reliable engagement metric. If you're still reporting primarily on opens, you're telling an incomplete story.

Current Benchmarks

• Open Rate: 42.35% average (take this with a grain of salt due to Apple MPP)
• Click Rate: 2.00% average, the metric to watch. B2B services average 2.21%; SaaS companies see around 1.91%.
• Click-to-Open Rate: 5.63%. Measures how compelling your email content is once someone opens.
• Unsubscribe Rate: 0.26% average; anything above 0.5% signals a problem with list quality, frequency, or content relevance.

Automated emails outperform campaigns by 3.6x. Welcome sequences hit 83.63% open rates. Abandoned cart emails recover 5-15% of lost sales. If you're not using automation, you're leaving money on the table. Start with welcome, abandoned cart, and post-purchase sequences.

Cross-Channel Consolidation

Tracking KPIs across channels gets messy fast. Most marketing teams juggle 5-10 different platforms, each with its own dashboard and metrics definitions. You have three options: export data manually into spreadsheets (time-consuming, error-prone), use each platform's native dashboards (siloed, no cross-channel view), or connect everything through a data integration tool that pulls from all your sources into one place.

Universal KPIs to Track

Regardless of channel, these metrics give you the full picture of marketing performance:
‍

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Total marketing spend / new customers. The foundation of marketing efficiency analysis.
• Marketing ROI: (Revenue - Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost × 100. Aim for 5:1 or better for most campaigns.
• Conversion Rate by Channel: Compare apples to apples across your marketing mix.
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): Leads meeting your scoring criteria. Track both volume and quality over time.
  ‍

When KPIs Drop: Quick Diagnosis

Not every dip requires panic. Start with these common causes:
‍

• Organic traffic down: Check Google Search Console for indexing errors, manual actions, or Core Web Vitals issues. Cross-reference with algorithm update timelines.
• Paid conversion rate dropping: Review audience targeting changes, landing page load times, and competitor activity. Check if your offer is still compelling.
• Email clicks declining: Test subject lines, segment your list more tightly, and review send times. List fatigue is usually the culprit.
• Social engagement tanking: Algorithm changes hit everyone. Check if format shifts (more video, different content types) could help. Engagement often recovers with consistency.

FAQ

What's the single most important marketing KPI?

Revenue. Everything else is a leading indicator. If you had to pick one supporting metric, choose conversion rate, it tells you whether your traffic is actually worth anything. For a deper look at tracking what matters, see our guide to tracking KPIs effectively.

How often should I check my KPIs?

Daily for paid campaigns (catch budget issues fast). Weekly for SEO rankings and social metrics. Monthly for big-picture trends like CAC and overall ROI. Don't obsess over daily fluctuations in organic traffic, look at week-over-week and month-over-month trends instead.

Are email open rates still reliable?

Not really. Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates them by pre-loading tracking pixels. Use click rate as your primary engagement metric. For deliverability health, monitor bounce rates and spam complaints instead.

What's a good engagement rate on social media?

Depends entirely on the platform. 5%+ on TikTok is average. 0.5% on Instagram is above average. Always compare against platform-specific benchmarks, not a universal standard. Industry also matters, entertainment brands naturally outperform B2B.

Is a 6% Google Ads conversion rate realistic?

That's the current average, but it varies wildly. Legal and dental services regularly hit 9%+. Real estate and B2B often sit around 3-4%. Your industry benchmark matters more than the overall average. If you're significantly below your industry, start with landing page optimization.

Should I prioritize SEO or paid ads?

Both, if possible. Paid ads get immediate results but stop when the budget does. SEO takes 3-6 months but compounds over time. A practical approach: use paid to validate keywords and landing pages, then build SEO around the winners.

What tools do I need to track all this?

At minimum: Google Analytics 4, platform-specific dashboards (Google Ads, Meta Business Suite), and a spreadsheet. To scale without drowning in manual exports, you'll want a data integration tool that consolidates everything into Looker Studio, Google Sheets, or a BI platform.

‍

If you're tired of jumping between dashboards, Dataslayer connects 50+ marketing platforms to Google Sheets, Looker Studio, BigQuery, and Power BI. Pull all your KPIs into one place, automate your reports, and stop copy-pasting data by starting your 15-day free trial.