KPI monitoring:five lessons to read business KPIs together
By Enrico Giubertoni
Trusted by
Worldline
Alba Leasing
L'Erbolario
3M
This article is for marketing managers, sales directors and CEOs who receive a dashboard every week and still find it hard to decide. KPI monitoring becomes useful when the numbers of different departments are read together and completed with the reasons behind them. Here you will find five lessons from a real case, a method to remove vanity metrics from your reports, and the questions to ask your own KPIs on Monday morning.
What is KPI monitoring, and why does it often stop halfway?
KPI monitoring is the continuous observation of key performance indicators (the few measures that show whether a company is approaching its objectives) to decide what to change and when.
Read superficially, it is a reporting exercise; a deeper reading determines that it is a decision tool, and its value depends on which data it puts side by side.
Engagement is the first thing to measure.
In an episode of my podcast I explored two themes: how to measure the interest and engagement of the target with meaningful indicators, and how to understand why the target acts in a certain way. The five lessons below come from my work as a consultant for many Italian brands, and each one can become a working practice in your KPI analysis.
Lesson 1: engagement KPIs anticipate conversion
In B2B as in B2C, an engaged target is more ready to act, and your business KPIs should make this link visible. Whether the action is a sale, a lead, a booking or watching a video, the degree of engagement determines how easily the person completes it. A good KPI analysis shows you where to intervene.
What this means for your processes:
Measure interest with dedicated indicators: time on page, pages per session, interaction rate
Adapt your calls to action (the invitations to take the next step, such as “download” or “book a call”) to whether the indicators describe a cold or a warm target, because the same call to action fits one and not the other
Lesson 2: quantitative KPIs answer “how much”
Quantitative indicators give a picture of engagement and results. For example:
Actions on your digital touchpoints (the points where a customer meets the company): clicks, downloads, sign-ups
These indicators are essential for KPI monitoring and for management control (the discipline of comparing results with budget and objectives). They answer the questions “how engaged is my target?” and “how many results am I obtaining?”. The motivations behind the behaviour remain outside their field, and decisions need them.
Lesson 3: qualitative analysis reveals the “why”
To understand why the target acts, or stays still, KPI analysis integrates qualitative data and a good measure of managerial intuition. In the case I described in the podcast, I guided a company to use both kinds of data to study how geography influenced the choice between e-commerce and physical shops.
What we learnt:
City residents often researched online, raising page views on the website, and concluded the purchase in store, for convenience and to see and touch the product
Those living far from the centre chose e-commerce, because the shop was difficult to reach, and this moved online sales
Understanding these reasons is the basis for strategic decisions on processes. KPI monitoring needs this dimension too.
Lesson 4: KPIs crossed between departments open new solutions
In my experience, one of the most powerful steps in KPI analysis is to share and cross data collected by different departments: marketing, sales, retail, customer service. It changes the point of view on the whole business. I often meet teams that work in organisational silos (each department isolated from the others), where each one looks at its own numbers, and this limits the capacity to take good and innovative decisions.
When KPI analysis is integrated, patterns and correlations emerge:
Between geographic location and conversion rates
Between qualitative motivations of customers and the fluctuations of certain indicators
Between the behaviour of urban and suburban audiences
Lesson 5: integrated channels and processes improve economic results
Changing the strategy starting from crossed KPI analysis can transform business processes and, as a consequence, improve the main indicators. The point is to train yourself to decide on a complete and dynamic view.
In practice this can mean:
Using e-commerce as a shop and also as a presentation catalogue and a lead generation tool for those who then buy in store
Adapting informative content and offers to the geographic area of the target
Telling a different, personalised story according to the needs and profile of each audience
Signals, indicators and metrics show how you are progressing.
The result of careful KPI analysis is a richer experience for the customer, which translates into better economic performance for the company. This is why, as a digital marketing consultant, I start from organisation before tools.
Vanity metrics in B2B: what to measure instead
My workshop on vanity metrics at the Social Case History Forum, Milan, 17 November 2016
A vanity metric is a number that looks good in a report and changes no decision: followers, page views, likes. The term was popularised by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup (2011), who set against it actionable metrics, those that link an action to an effect. I taught this at a workshop of the Social Case History Forum in Milan on 17 November 2016, and in B2B it matters more today. A report full of vanity metrics asks the board to approve a budget without showing what the budget produced.
Why do vanity metrics survive in B2B reports?
They almost always grow, and they are easy to collect. Two facts make them less reliable today.
The first is automation. Imperva’s 2025 Bad Bot Report (published on 15 April 2025) states that automated traffic reached 51% of all web traffic in 2024, with malicious bots at 37%. Raw traffic is no longer a measure of human interest, and a visit counter that includes robots rewards the wrong work.
The second is the contact that does not become business. Forrester, presenting its roundtable “How To Move From MQLs To Opportunities” (London, 22 March 2023), argues that B2B marketing should rely on opportunity segments, which give better signals of intent than marketing qualified leads (the contacts that marketing judges ready to be passed to sales).
Which question separates a decision KPI from a vanity metric?
The rule I teach has two questions. Which decision changes if this number goes up or down? And who owns that decision? If nobody can answer, the number goes to a diagnostic report, where it helps to understand a problem, and leaves the list that the board reads.
Views and clicks from Lesson 2 are not forbidden. They are signals to check a campaign. They become vanity when they are presented as results.
What do you measure instead?
Choose indicators that follow the money along the path of the sale:
Cost per qualified opportunity instead of cost per lead: the marketing spend divided by the opportunities that sales accepts and opens in the sales pipeline (the list of deals in progress, by stage)
Conversion from one stage to the next along the sales funnel (the path from first contact to signed contract), and not the raw volume at the top
Revenue and margin by channel, the figure that the finance department recognises as its own
Share of marketing contacts accepted by sales, which shows whether the two departments agree on what a good contact is
How to apply KPI analysis in your company
Four steps translate the lessons into action.
Monitor KPIs continuously. The first step is constant KPI analysis:
What conversion rate do you obtain on each channel, and which indicators are the reference in your sector?
Where do your customers come from? Include geographic and demographic origin in detail.
How do they behave at each stage of the funnel?
Combine quantitative and qualitative data. Absolute numbers are a starting point. Ask yourself:
Why do certain segments convert more or show higher engagement?
Where does the purchase process stop: logistics, incentive, usability or customer experience?
Which bottlenecks does the analysis of processes reveal that the indicators alone hide?
Which of the numbers in your last report would change a decision if it moved?
Integrate physical and digital stores. Offer value in a complementary way and keep the indicators of both worlds under management control, as the retail marketing examples show:
E-commerce is also a source of inspiration and orientation, and it supports the results of physical retail
Offer reassurance, such as a clear right of withdrawal and verified reviews, to those buying online from decentralised areas, and monitor conversion by area
Promote collaboration between departments. Transparent sharing of data between marketing, sales, retail and customer service produces precise, measurable strategies and decisions that work together.
Monitoring engagement and results with rigorous KPI analysis is a question of numbers and, above all, of deep understanding of your customers and your processes. By integrating quantitative and qualitative data, overcoming internal divisions and adapting the message to each audience, you increase ROI (the return on what you invest) and make your KPIs the reference for growth.
Why should KPI analysis go beyond quantitative data?
Quantitative KPIs, such as conversion rate, views and clicks, answer the question ‘how engaged is my target?’ and leave open why people behave that way. Effective decisions require qualitative data and a good measure of managerial intuition, so that you understand the motivations behind the behaviour you observe.
How are target engagement and conversion linked?
An engaged target is always more ready to act, in B2B as in B2C. The degree of engagement determines how easily a person completes the desired action, whether a purchase, a lead or watching a video. For this reason you measure it with dedicated KPIs, such as time on page and interaction rate, and you adapt calls to action to a cold or warm target.
Why cross the KPIs of marketing, sales, retail and customer service?
Teams that work in silos look only at their own numbers, and this limits the quality of decisions. When the data of different departments is shared, correlations emerge that nobody sees alone, for example between geographic location and conversion rates, or between urban and suburban audiences.
How does the role of e-commerce change when you read KPIs well?
E-commerce becomes a presentation catalogue and a lead generation tool for those who then buy in store, in addition to a shop. In a case I followed, city residents researched online and bought in store, while those living far from the centre chose e-commerce: from there came content and offers adapted to the target’s geographic area.
Which questions should you start from to analyse your company's KPIs?
Start from three questions: what conversion rate you obtain on each channel, where your customers come from and how they behave at each stage of the funnel. Then ask why certain segments convert more and where the purchase process stops: logistics, incentive, usability or user experience.
Are page views and follower counts always vanity metrics?
They become vanity metrics when a report presents them as results. Used as diagnostic signals, for example to check that a campaign reaches its audience, they remain useful. The test is whether anyone would change a decision if the number moved: if nobody would, it belongs in a diagnostic report and not in the board’s KPIs.
