Campaign monitoring guide: metrics, tools, and best practices

To stay on top of your campaigns, you must juggle multiple channels, interpret diverse key performance indicators, and quickly pivot when results aren’t meeting expectations.

Luckily, choosing the right campaign performance metrics makes this process much more manageable.

In this article, you’ll learn which metrics to track, how to set up an effective monitoring system, and how to use insights to refine future campaigns.

By the end, you’ll have a clear framework for driving positive returns and justifying your investments to stakeholders.

What are the fundamental metrics for effective campaign monitoring?

Different campaigns serve different purposes. For example, you might track reach or impressions if you’re running a brand awareness campaign. If you’re aiming to drive conversions in paid ads, you’d probably look at click-through rate, conversion rate, etc. Below are three goal-based categories—awareness, consideration, and conversion—along with metrics that best fit each scenario.

1) Top-of-funnel campaigns

Goal: Increase brand recognition and introduce your product or service to new audiences.

Relevant channels: Social media ads for brand recall, display ads on industry publications, and influencer collaborations.

• Impressions / reach
  • What it is: The total number of times your ads or posts are viewed, and how many unique people see them.
  • Why it matters: Awareness is about visibility. Even great content won’t get the attention it needs if your reach is low.
• Engagement rate
  • What it is: The percentage of people who interact (like, comment, or share) with your posts out of the total who see them.
  • Why it matters: A high engagement rate suggests your message resonates, building a foundation for future conversions.
• View-through rate (VTR) for video ads
  • What it is: The share of viewers who watch your video to a certain point (often 50%, 75%, or 100%).
  • Why it matters: Tells you how compelling your brand messaging is and whether your video ads hold attention.

Tip: If a certain channel has strong impressions but dismal engagement, refine your creative or audience targeting to encourage actual interaction. You might also experiment with more engaging media, such as short videos or quizzes.

2) Middle-of-funnel campaigns

Goal: Move potential customers from basic awareness to more profound research or interest in your offering.

Relevant channels: Social or search ads to encourage product exploration, content marketing for thought leadership, and remarketing ads for visitors who have browsed your site.

• Click-through rate (CTR)
  • What it is: The percentage of people who see your ad or post and decide to click.
  • Why it matters: In the consideration phase, you want to confirm that people are willing to learn more. A low CTR suggests misaligned messaging or irrelevant audiences.
• Cost per click (CPC)
  • What it is: The amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad.
  • Why it matters: If your CPC rises, you could be in a highly competitive space or your ad quality may be off. Monitoring CPC helps you optimize bids and manage budgets effectively.
• Time on site/bounce rate
  • What it is: How long do visitors spend on your site, and how often do they exit after viewing one page?
  • Why it matters: When people are in “research” mode, they typically explore multiple pages. High bounce rates or short session durations might mean your content doesn’t address their questions.

Tip: If certain channels boast a high CTR but short time on site, visitors may be curious but leave quickly—often a sign that your landing pages need improvement. Meanwhile, a lower CTR with longer session duration can mean fewer but more serious prospects.

3) Bottom-of-funnel campaigns

Goal: Drive the final action—purchase, lead submission, booking a demo, etc.

Relevant channels: Paid search for bottom-funnel queries, retargeting ads to re-engage warm leads, and direct email promotions to existing subscribers.

• Conversion rate
  • What it is: The percentage of clicks or visitors that complete a desired action.
  • Why it matters: Even large traffic numbers won’t matter if few visitors convert. A low rate may point to misaligned offers or poor landing page UX.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA)
  • What it is: The total cost of acquiring a single paying customer or qualified lead.
  • Why it matters: A high CPA indicates inefficiency—either your ads aren’t targeting the right prospects, or the offer fails to convert effectively.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS)
  • What it is: The revenue generated for every dollar spent. For example, a 4:1 ratio means $4 of revenue per $1 spent.
  • Why it matters: ROAS aligns marketing spend with revenue. If it’s too low, you’re losing money on your campaigns.
• Customer lifetime value (CLTV)
  • What it is: The total revenue you predict from a user over their entire relationship with your brand.
  • Why it matters: High acquisition costs might be acceptable if your long-term recurring revenue is substantial—particularly relevant for subscription models or B2B SaaS.

Tip: Watch for a mismatch between short-term returns and LTV. If your CPA is high but your CLTV justifies it, your campaigns may still be profitable in the long term. Keep retargeting out of your prospecting funnel unless you want to double-count conversions.

Additional resources:

• Monitoring these metrics together helps you see where the campaign funnel might be leaking. For a deeper look into analyzing these metrics, check out our marketing analytics resource for expert tips on measurement.
• If you’re looking for structured guidance on how to measure conversions across platforms, our marketing measurement guide can help you build a reliable framework.

How to set up campaign tracking and monitoring

Effective monitoring starts well before a campaign launches. You’ll need a strategy for naming your campaigns, collecting relevant data, and deciding how often to check performance.

Campaign naming conventions

A logical and consistent naming system makes your data easier to interpret. By applying a well-structured taxonomy—like campaign naming conventions that include channel, region, offer type, and date—you can quickly filter or pivot your data. This small step can save hours of confusion down the road.

Data collection methods

At the core of campaign monitoring is a robust data collection process. You’ll gather metrics from:

• Ad platforms like Google Ads or Facebook Ads.
• Analytics tools (Google Analytics, for instance) that track user behavior, goal completions, and conversions.
• Customer relationship management (CRM) systems that capture lead status, revenue, or lifetime value.
• Email marketing platforms for email campaign performance metrics, including open and click-through rates.

The complexity of integrating these sources can be daunting, especially when you need a unified view. Our marketing reporting guide offers tips on consolidating these metrics into clear, consistent dashboards.

How often should you monitor your performance

How often should you check your numbers? The answer depends on campaign goals, audience size, and overall budget.

• High-volume, fast-moving campaigns (like flash sales or major product launches): Daily or near real-time checks can help you quickly tweak bids, creatives, or offers.
• Longer-running brand awareness campaigns with less frequent conversions: Weekly or even bi-weekly reviews might suffice, preventing you from making hasty decisions based on short-term fluctuations.
• Exception-based monitoring: You may not need to check everything daily. Instead, set alerts that notify you when a metric deviates significantly from the norm—such as an unexpected jump in CPC.

Still, truly real-time data is subject to API delays. While it can be helpful for tactical decisions like budget pacing or creative pruning, most marketers will do fine with data that’s a few hours behind—especially when the campaign runs for weeks or months.

Additionally, a well-built dashboard gives you a centralized view of each campaign’s performance. Instead of juggling spreadsheets or multiple logins, you see key metrics—spend, clicks, conversions—in one place.

Visualizing your data saves time and helps you spot sudden changes or anomalies. It also lets you share insights more effectively with stakeholders, encouraging faster, data-driven decisions. Explore our dashboard templates gallery for more options.

Tools for campaign monitoring

Marketing platforms

Most marketing platforms provides basic reports that you can use to monitor your campaign performance. For example:

• Web analytics (e.g., Google Analytics 4) Tracks user behavior on your site—page views, sessions, funnels—so you see how visitors navigate and where they drop off.
• Ad platforms (e.g., LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads) show you spend, clicks, CPC, and conversions, which help evaluate paid social or retargeting.
• Ecommerce systems (e.g., Shopify) provide order histories, product-level conversions, AOV, and repeat purchase data—crucial for online stores.
• Email marketing solutions (e.g., Mailchimp) Deliver open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and conversions from email campaigns—key for nurturing leads and existing customers.

Each platform captures performance data in its own way. While these platforms offer built-in dashboards and reports, there are good reasons to pull that data out and bring it into a reporting tool like Google Sheets or Looker Studio.

• Holistic view of your campaigns: If you’re running paid social ads while also analyzing website behavior in a web analytics tool, you can’t get the whole picture unless you blend data from both. Exporting your ad spend from, say, LinkedIn Ads and aligning it with your site’s conversion data reveals which channels contribute most to sales.
• Historical analysis and benchmarking: Many analytics or ad platforms only store data for a limited time. Suppose you want to do 3 years of historical comparisons or see how a current seasonal campaign stacks up against prior years. In that case, you need a separate repository to retain all those records.
• Custom metrics and advanced calculations: Tools like Google Analytics or Shopify have predefined metrics. However, you might want something unique, like a “complex lead score” factoring in user demographics or product usage. Exporting raw data to a more flexible environment lets you create these custom metrics and run more profound analyses.
• Multiple channels, one report: Ad spend might live in Facebook Ads, conversions in Shopify, and email metrics in Mailchimp. Each tool is great on its own, but manually copying results into spreadsheets gets messy fast. Centralizing or “blending” these data sources clarifies how each channel supports your overall marketing strategy.

Reporting tools

Spreadsheets or data visualization tools give you more freedom to analyze your data and build different reports.

• Google Sheets or Excel: Excellent for ad-hoc analysis and quick, real-time KPI checks, especially if you manage smaller budgets or niche campaigns.
• Visualization platforms: Tools like Looker Studio or Power BI help you create interactive dashboards for daily monitoring. They highlight spikes or dips in performance so you can immediately act on anomalies.

Check out this list of marketing reporting software for more ideas.

Marketing intelligence platform

Manually copying data from multiple platforms and reconciling different metrics can drain your time and morale. Marketing intelligence tools—such as Supermetrics—help you connect, manage, and analyze your marketing data in one place. This approach allows you to spend less time wrestling with numbers and more time optimizing your campaigns.

1. Connect: You can get data from different platforms, including Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn, ecommerce solutions, and CRMs. Instead of juggling separate logins and reports, you can stream all your cost, conversion, and engagement metrics into a single destination.

2. Manage: Using features like Custom Fields or Data Blending, you can edit, manage, blend, and prompt your marketing data to suit your needs, without any technical skills.

3. Analyze: Once you’re done with preparing your data, you can bring your data into a reporting and visualization tool to build dashboards.

4. Activate: Instead of just reporting on data, Supermetrics lets you export from different sources and connect to ad platforms, analytics tools, and even your own applications.

Best practices for monitoring and reporting on your campaigns

Reporting is more than throwing numbers into a document. It’s about telling a story that resonates with stakeholders—from executives who want to see ROI, to team members who need actionable direction.

Report structure guidelines

• Begin with core KPIs: Summarize CTR, CPC, conversion rate, and CPA at the top so readers can quickly grasp the campaign’s health.
• Include trends or time-series charts: Show how performance evolves over days, weeks, or months. Spikes and dips are more meaningful with context.
• Highlight significant insights: Place any major accomplishments or concerning patterns front and center. Provide brief explanations (e.g., “CTR fell 20% due to increased competition on keywords”).

Main visualization techniques

• Bar charts for comparing channels or ad groups.
• Line graphs for analyzing performance over time.
• Pie charts for understanding channel budget allocation or audience segments.

Leveraging your chosen tool’s visualization capabilities helps stakeholders quickly spot what’s working well—and what might need attention.

Stakeholder communication

Clarity and consistency are crucial. Even the best data can be undercut by poor presentation. To keep everyone aligned:

• Use common definitions: Ensure everyone agrees on what constitutes a “lead” or a “conversion.”
• Focus on outcomes: Tie metrics back to revenue or ROI wherever possible.
• Solicit feedback: Encourage questions. If something isn’t clear, use it as an opportunity to refine next month’s report.

For further guidance on presenting data effectively, check out our marketing reporting guide for digital marketers, including dashboards, templates, tools & software.

Over to you

Effective campaign management is all about choosing and monitoring key metrics tailored to your marketing goals. By understanding which metrics to track, you can improve performance and show the value of your efforts to stakeholders. We hope that with these insights, you're set to refine your strategies and achieve better results in future campaigns.