Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

basically, a metric is anything that is consistently measured e.g. weekly measures of (1) unaided brand awareness and (2) aided brand awareness obtained in a telephone survey of a representative sample of 200 category customers. [customers have unaided brand awareness if they list your brand spontaneouly when asked about the category, and aided brand awareness when they recognize your brand when giving a list of brands].

A key performance indicator is a metric that has been shown to drive your performance (e.g. sales or profits). For an electronics or an automobile brand, unaided awareness may be a KPI: customers need to know the brand before they go to a dealer. In contrast, aided awareness may be a KPI for a frequently purchased snack with excellent distribution: consumers do not have to remember the brand before going into the supermarket, they just need to recognize it on the shelf.

As I am a quant marketer, I prefer KPIs which have been empirically demonstrated to impact performance, preferably with some weeks lead time (I call these KPIs 'leading indicators'). In the absence of such evidence however, I often ask manufacturers, retailers and industry experts their opinion about what drives performance.

A metric is any standard of measurement - number visitors, average time on site, percentage of bounce rates per page etc.

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a metric that you have chosen that will give an indication of your performance and can be used as a driver for improvement.

In other words: where a metric is an overall measurement, a KPI is a measurement of how you have achieved the goals that your company has set for itself.

In general it's preferred to just chose a few KPIs (say 3 or 4) to focus on.

The point is this: a metric is just a measurement. A KPI is an indicator (a metric) that you have chosen, and agreed with your partners (whether internal to marketing or with customers), that will determine whether you are meeting your critical success factors (CSF).

Lorenz and Koen have gone above and beyond. Nothing more really to add, other than to comment KPIs are usually associated with factors that affect an outcome, such as 'sales targets' or 'managing people' etc. Whereas, metrics are industry specific & are referred to by brands when marketing activities or new launches etc are planned.

Here's a side-by-side summarization of dashboards *& scorecards from Gartner:

Subject: Dashboard / Scorecard

Scope: Tactical / Strategic

Use: Performance measurement (what happened) / Performance management (progress vs. goals)

Target: Line-of-business staff / Executives & managers

Data: Historical & current metrics, usually tied to specific operational goals / Historical, current & future KPIs
tied to organizational success

Cadence: Near-real-time feeds / Periodic updates

Output: Summarizes and visually represents performance measures / Integrates and compares goals, objectives and strategic performance measures