You can track hundreds of marketing metrics. You should manage to about a dozen. The difference between a metric and a KPI is simple: a KPI changes a decision when it moves. Most dashboards drown teams in clicks, impressions, and open rates while burying the handful of numbers that tell you whether marketing is actually making money. This guide cuts to the marketing KPIs to track that genuinely matter, fourteen of them, with formulas and worked examples in USD, grouped so you know which ones to put at the top of the report.
Efficiency KPIs: is the spend paying off?
These are the headline numbers. If you only had room for four KPIs on a wall, these would be them.
1. Blended ROAS
Total revenue divided by total ad spend. Blended ROAS = total revenue / total ad spend. It cannot be inflated by overlapping attribution, unlike platform ROAS. See what is ROAS for the full breakdown.
2. MER (marketing efficiency ratio)
Total revenue divided by total marketing spend, including non-media costs. MER = total revenue / total marketing spend. The cleanest measure of whole-business marketing efficiency. More in what is MER.
3. Blended CAC
Total acquisition spend divided by new customers. Blended CAC = total acquisition spend / new customers. The true average cost to win a customer. See how to calculate blended CAC.
4. LTV:CAC ratio
Lifetime value divided by acquisition cost. LTV:CAC = LTV / CAC. Around 3:1 is healthy. The single best gauge of sustainable growth, covered in the LTV:CAC ratio guide.
Revenue KPIs: is the money growing?
5. Total revenue
Your true top line from orders and payments. Everything else is context for this.
6. Revenue by channel
Where revenue actually comes from, reconciled against true totals rather than platform claims. Reveals over-reliance on any one source.
7. Average order value (AOV)
AOV = total revenue / number of orders. If revenue is $200,000 across 4,000 orders, AOV is $50. Lifting AOV improves the economics of every campaign at once.
8. Contribution margin
Revenue minus variable costs, including cost of goods, shipping, and fees. It tells you how much each sale contributes before fixed costs, and it sets your break-even ROAS and MER.
Customer KPIs: are customers worth keeping?
9. Customer lifetime value (LTV)
LTV = average order value x purchases per year x average lifespan in years. Use gross profit LTV for honesty. A $50 AOV, 4 orders a year, 2.5 year lifespan, and 50 percent margin gives a gross profit LTV of $250.
10. Repeat purchase rate
The share of customers who buy more than once. A rising repeat rate lifts LTV and loosens your CAC ceiling.
11. CAC payback period
CAC payback = CAC / monthly gross profit per customer. How many months to earn back acquisition cost. Shorter payback frees cash to reinvest sooner.
Funnel KPIs: where does it break?
12. Conversion rate
Conversion rate = conversions / sessions. 2,000 orders from 100,000 sessions is a 2 percent conversion rate. Small improvements here cascade into every efficiency KPI.
13. Cost per acquisition (CPA)
CPA = ad spend / conversions. A channel-level cost number useful for optimizing within a platform, read alongside blended CAC for the true picture.
14. Marketing ROI
Marketing ROI = (gross profit from marketing minus marketing cost) / marketing cost. The bottom-line percentage return. See how to track marketing ROI.
The KPIs at a glance
| KPI | Formula | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Blended ROAS | Total revenue / total ad spend | Are ads paying off? |
| MER | Total revenue / total marketing spend | Is all marketing efficient? |
| Blended CAC | Acquisition spend / new customers | What does a customer cost? |
| LTV:CAC | LTV / CAC | Is growth sustainable? |
| Marketing ROI | (Gross profit - cost) / cost | What is the net return? |
How to choose which KPIs to put first
Fourteen KPIs is still too many for a headline report. The trick is to lead with the three or four that map most directly to your current goal, and keep the rest as supporting detail one click away. A useful way to decide is to ask what decision each KPI would change.
- If the goal is profitable growth, lead with MER and blended ROAS, supported by contribution margin. These tell you whether the machine is paying off right now.
- If the goal is sustainable scaling, lead with the LTV:CAC ratio and CAC payback period. They tell you whether you can keep spending without running out of cash.
- If the goal is fixing a leaky funnel, lead with conversion rate and AOV, since small gains there lift every efficiency number at once.
The same fourteen KPIs serve every goal; only the order changes. What stays constant is that a revenue-tied number, not an activity number, sits at the top.
Set targets, not just measurements
A KPI without a target is just a number on a screen. The value comes from pairing each one with a threshold that triggers a decision. A blended ROAS of 3.2x means nothing until you know your target is 3.5x and your break-even is 2.2x, at which point 3.2x reads instantly as profitable but under goal, a cue to optimize. The same logic applies to MER, CAC, and the LTV:CAC ratio. Set the target, set the floor, and your KPIs start telling you what to do rather than just what happened. Without targets, every weekly report becomes a debate; with them, the numbers make the call.
Avoid the vanity metrics
Notice what is missing from this list: impressions, raw clicks, follower counts, and email open rates. They can be diagnostic, but they are not KPIs, because you would not change a budget decision based on them alone. A campaign with a million impressions and a negative blended ROAS is a problem, not a win. Keep vanity numbers off the executive report and lead with the ones tied to money.
Seeing all fourteen in one place
The reason most teams track five of these well and ignore the rest is not laziness, it is plumbing. ROAS lives in ad platforms, revenue in Shopify and Stripe, LTV and retention in your customer data, traffic in GA4. Assembling all fourteen KPIs on one window, weekly, by hand, is a job nobody wants.
A blended dashboard collapses that work. MixedMetrics connects read-only to GA4, Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, Search Console, Shopify, Stripe, Klaviyo, and HubSpot, then computes these KPIs together on one live marketing KPI dashboard, with the AI layer flagging what changed and where money is leaking. Pair it with the ecommerce analytics dashboard view and your whole funnel, from spend to repeat purchase, sits in front of you.
Pick the dozen-or-so KPIs that change decisions, lead with the efficiency four, and keep them current. That is the difference between a marketing report that gets read and one that gets ignored.
See every marketing KPI on one dashboard
Connect your channels once, and MixedMetrics keeps ROAS, MER, CAC, LTV, and the rest live in one view.
See how MixedMetrics works for your kind of team on the use cases page.
MIXEDMETRICS // GET STARTED
See this metric live across every channel
Connect your ad platforms, store, and billing through read-only connectors and watch blended ROAS, CAC, MER, LTV, and revenue by channel land in one live dashboard.