Marketing KPIs: the 10 worth checking every week
Ten marketing KPIs that can move in a week, where to find each one in GA4, what a weekly change means, and which numbers belong in the monthly review.
The ten marketing KPIs worth checking every week are sessions by channel, new users, engagement rate, key events, session key event rate, key events by landing page, organic search clicks, cost per key event, revenue, and qualified leads or sales. Each can move in seven days, and when it moves, someone can act on it by Monday afternoon. Customer acquisition cost, lifetime value and ROI still matter, but they belong in the monthly review.
Why most marketing KPI lists fail as a weekly check
Search for “marketing KPIs” and you get lists of up to 40 metrics, from email open rate to Net Promoter Score. Few of them say how often to look, where to find the number, or what a change means. So a growth marketer opens a dashboard with 30 tiles, sees half up and half down, and closes it without a decision. An agency pastes the same tiles into a client report that nobody reads (more on that in why clients don’t read your reports).
A weekly KPI passes three tests:
- It can move in a week. Lifetime value cannot. Sessions can.
- It has enough volume. Going from 4 demo requests to 3 is noise. From 40 to 30 is worth a look.
- Someone acts when it moves. If a drop would not change a page, a budget or a campaign, it is a metric, not a KPI.
How to read a weekly change before you react
- Compare with the last four weeks, not only last week. One odd week (a holiday, a newsletter, a bot spike) distorts a plain week-over-week comparison.
- Distrust the last day. Google says GA4 data can take 24 to 48 hours to process, so yesterday may still be incomplete on Monday morning.
- Read counts and rates together. Key events down with sessions down is a traffic problem. Key events down with sessions flat is a conversion problem.
This article quotes no benchmarks, on purpose: generic “average conversion rate” figures mix industries and definitions. GA4’s own benchmarking feature shows the median, 25th and 75th percentiles for a peer group in your industry category, refreshed every 24 hours. If you want an outside reference, use that one.
The 10 marketing KPIs worth checking every week
GA4 renamed “conversions” to “key events”, so older guides use the old word.
1. Sessions by channel
What it is: visits, split by source (Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Email…) using GA4’s default channel group rules. Find it in Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition.
A weekly change means: total sessions say little; the split says where to look. A drop in one channel usually has one cause: a lost ranking, a paused campaign, a newsletter that did not go out.
Ignore: small moves in Unassigned. Google uses it when no channel rule matches, so it points to tagging, not performance.
2. New users
What it is: first-time visitors. GA4 counts a new user when it logs the first_visit event. Find it in Reports, Acquisition, User acquisition.
A weekly change means: this is your reach. Sessions holding while new users fall means you are finding fewer new people, which shows up in leads a few weeks later.
Ignore: the exact count after a consent banner change. Watch the trend.
3. Engagement rate
What it is: the share of engaged sessions: longer than 10 seconds, with a key event, or with at least two page views. It shows in Traffic acquisition; most other reports need an Editor to add it.
A weekly change means: a sudden drop in one channel points to worse traffic (a new ad placement, referral spam) or a page broken on one device.
Ignore: bounce rate. In GA4 it is the exact inverse of engagement rate.
4. Key events
What it is: the actions that matter: a demo request, a signup, a purchase. You mark events as key events; for forms, Google recommends the generate_lead event.
A weekly change means: this is the number the rest of the list explains. Pick one primary key event. Mark ten and the total stops meaning anything.
Ignore: scrolls and video plays as KPIs. They can be events without being key events.
5. Session key event rate
What it is: the share of sessions with at least one key event, GA4’s closest thing to a site conversion rate. It sits in Traffic acquisition once key events exist.
A weekly change means: read it per channel. A paid channel whose rate halves while its sessions double is buying cheaper, worse traffic.
Ignore: the sitewide rate in low-volume weeks, where one lead swings it by whole points.
6. Key events by landing page
What it is: which pages start the sessions that convert. Find it in Engagement, Landing page, with the key events column.
A weekly change means: this turns “conversions are down” into a fix. If the drop sits on one page, check what changed on it: a redesign, a new form, a broken button.
Ignore: the long tail. Watch the top 10 landing pages weekly.
7. Organic search clicks
What it is: clicks from Google results, measured by Search Console. Once you link Search Console, GA4 shows clicks, impressions and position (publish the collection from the Library first).
A weekly change means: clicks down with impressions flat is a click-through problem. Clicks and impressions both down is lost rankings. The SEO client report goes deeper.
Ignore: the last two days. Search Console data reaches Analytics 48 hours after collection.
8. Cost per key event (paid channels)
What it is: ad spend divided by key events, per campaign. Google Ads cost appears in GA4 once the accounts are linked; other platforms need a campaign data import (formerly cost data import) with UTM tags that match the import file exactly. Reading it inside each ad platform is fine.
A weekly change means: rising cost with stable spend means the audience or the ad is wearing out, the earliest sign a campaign needs new creative.
Ignore: swings on small budgets, which need more than a week to read.
9. Revenue
What it is: money attributed to the site. GA4’s Total revenue adds purchases, subscriptions and ad revenue, minus refunds, and is only accurate if purchase events send value and currency.
A weekly change means: revenue down with the key event rate flat is a traffic problem; revenue down with traffic flat is a conversion or pricing problem. Ecommerce has a longer list of its own.
Ignore: matching your billing system to the cent. Consent and ad blockers make them differ.
10. Qualified leads or sales
What it is: leads sales accepted, or deals from marketing, counted in your CRM. Usually not in GA4.
A weekly change means: the reality check on items 4 and 5. Form fills up and qualified leads flat means you are attracting the wrong people.
Ignore: the weekly number on long sales cycles. Track it monthly and use key events as the weekly proxy.
The marketing KPIs that belong in the monthly review
| KPI | Why it is not weekly |
|---|---|
| Customer acquisition cost | Needs a month of spend and closed customers |
| Customer lifetime value | Built from months of retention |
| Marketing ROI | Long sales cycles push returns into later months |
| Social followers, email list size | Gradual growth rarely changes a decision |
| Average session duration, page views | Descriptive, rarely tied to a decision |
Agencies and solo marketers: what changes
If you report KPIs to clients
Agree the list with each client at kickoff, in writing: their primary key event, the channels you manage, and the one number their boss asks about. Then report the week as a story (what moved, why, what you are doing) rather than ten tiles. The client reporting guide covers cadence and formats around this weekly check.
If you are the whole marketing team
Drop the KPIs for channels you do not run; without paid campaigns you have nine numbers, not ten, and without ecommerce, eight. Spend the saved time on item 6, since a landing page is something one person can change by Tuesday. When a number drops and you do not know why, the GA4 traffic drop checklist walks through the causes in order.
Getting the weekly check done without opening GA4
Checking ten KPIs against a four-week baseline every Monday takes discipline, and most manual routines fade. The ways to automate it are compared in how to send a GA4 weekly report to Slack.
Dialytics, our product, covers part of this for the GA4 side. Every Monday at 8am (Paris time) it posts a digest to Slack comparing the week with the one before: what moved in traffic, channels, engagement and key events, the likely reason, and the one point worth your attention. Agencies can connect each client’s GA4 property and route its digest to that client’s own channel. Between Mondays it compares yesterday with the same weekday over about 12 weeks and posts at most one alert a day, only when something is unusual. You can ask a follow-up by mentioning the bot in the thread. Revenue, ad costs, Search Console and your CRM stay in their own tools.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a marketing KPI and a marketing metric?
A metric is any number you can measure, such as page views or followers. A KPI is a metric you have tied to a goal and agreed to act on when it moves. If nobody would change a budget, a page or a campaign because a number went down, it is a metric, and it can leave the weekly check.
How many marketing KPIs should you track?
Fewer than most lists suggest. A weekly check works with eight to ten numbers that can actually move in seven days and that someone owns. Slower numbers such as customer acquisition cost or lifetime value belong in a monthly or quarterly review, where there is enough data for them to mean something.
Should marketing KPIs be compared week over week or year over year?
Use both, for different jobs. Week over week catches problems early but is noisy, so compare the last seven days with the average of the previous four weeks, not just the previous week. Year over year is the right lens for seasonal businesses, but only once you have a full year of clean GA4 data.
Are there benchmarks for marketing KPIs in GA4?
Yes. GA4 shows peer benchmarks on many metric cards: the median, 25th and 75th percentiles for properties in your industry category, refreshed daily. They are more relevant than generic industry averages from blog posts, but your own trend over the last few months is still the better reference for a weekly check.