My blog focuses on Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. A key to success is keeping track of your business metrics. The following guest post is entitled, Marketing Metrics That Matter: Tracking Success Beyond Vanity Numbers.
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As the ever-evolving virtual landscape churns out new platforms, social media networks, and vain influencers amassing millions of followers seemingly overnight, it can be tempting to go in the same direction as a professional marketer. However, while likes, follows, and virtual shares can rack up quickly, they can also dissolve just as fast without a solid foundation and a message that accurately represents your brand. Understanding vanity metrics, or numbers, and how to track success beyond them is becoming increasingly vital when it comes to brand equity, customer loyalty, and ultimately, revenue generation opportunities.
1. Learn About Vanity Metrics and Their Limitations
Defining the basics of vanity metrics is critical before diving into their potential limitations in any market or industry. Vanity metrics, or vanity numbers, make a brand or business “look” good on the surface. For instance, a brand that appears to have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of followers may appear more credible, trustworthy, and reputable at first glance than a brand with just 11 followers to start.

However, while vanity metrics provide positive first impressions, they do not always translate into conversions, loyalty, engagement, and long-term revenue.
● Surface-Level Vanity Metrics: Some surface-level vanity metric indicators include social media followers’ sad likes. A high follower count can help reach more users, but only if they have a genuine interest in your brand and business and what it has to offer.
● Traffic Without Reason: If you receive a spike in website visitors without reason, this does not always mean you are “going viral” or that you’ve hit a marketing sweet spot. If your website’s bounce rate is higher than average, you’re likely losing prospective customers or clients before you have a chance to make a sale.
● False Sense of Achievement: If you only utilize vanity metrics to measure the success of your business and brand, you may run into blind spots. Superficial metrics can cause marketers to become complacent, missing out on growth and expansion opportunities.
2. Define Meaningful Metrics for Your Brand
The metrics that matter for your business and brand may not be as significant to another organization. Shifting to more meaningful metrics will help you remain focused on what is most important for your brand and its future.
● Demonstrate ROI: Demonstrating ROI can help appeal to shareholders, partners, and investors. Metrics such as the ROAS, or Return on Ad Spend, along with CPA, or Cost Per Acquisition, can help those involved with your organization see your marketing efforts.
● Data-Driven Decisions: Making data-driven decisions is much easier to do with data such as SQL, or Sales-Qualified Leads, along with the monitoring of CTR, or click-through rates on specific pages of your website.
● Repeat Customers: Determine and calculate the LTV, or Lifetime Value, of each of your customers. This can help you strategize campaigns to generate repeat business in the future.
● Upselling/Cross-Selling: Upselling and cross-selling opportunities can help you capitalize on shopping patterns and/or current market trends, depending on the industry you represent.
3. Prioritize Important Metrics
Determining which marketing metrics are important to you and your brand will vary based on your industry, products, services, and target audience or demographics. There are several core factors that can help you determine the overall efficiency of an existing marketing strategy.
● Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The CPA, or Cost Per Acquisition, required for you to obtain a new customer or generate a lead, is essential to understand the efficiency of campaigns. When your CPA costs more than the customers’ overall LTV, or Lifetime Value, it may be time to realign and rework your existing marketing strategy.
● Conversion Rate: The conversion rate of your users when reading newsletters, shopping on your eCommerce site, or even adding an item to a cart is essential to track. Stronger conversion rates indicate that your messaging is currently resonating with your intended audience.
● Customer Lifetime Value: Your customer’s lifetime value, or LTV, is the projected net profit you intend to generate from one customer (even after their initial purchase from you). Calculating the LTV of your customers can help with gauging long-term profitability based on existing and future marketing efforts.
● Engagement Metrics: Beyond keeping track of traditional “likes”, “shares”, comments, and “follows”, it’s also important to track comment-to-like ratios and the CTR, or click-through rate of emails you send in your marketing funnels. Engagement metrics are often more telling than traditional vanity metrics and numbers. Engagement metrics help you get to know more about user psychology and how your prospective customers respond to a wide range of promotions and marketing copy.
4. Measure Beyond
Beyond traditional analytics platforms and tools, it’s also important to track brand sentiment to better understand how the digital climate is evolving.
● Social Listening: Social listening involves tracking brand mentions, keywords, and even specific long-tail phrases or hashtags you are focused on. Tracking mentions across blogs, forums, and social media networks provides real-time data and insights. There are also third-party applications and tools available to quickly analyze sentiment and specific keywords relevant to your industry and/or the specific products and services you provide. Platforms like Brandwatch offer powerful social listening and analytics capabilities. Social listening is also beneficial as you are building a loyal following, as it’s much easier to determine which videos and pieces of content resonate best with your current and target audience online.
● Take Action: When you recognize a spike in negative attention or if your brand’s sentiment is trending negatively, you can address the issues before it escalates or spirals out of control with real-time social listening and analytics in action. When marketing a brand or business, utilizing A/B testing is always advisable. A/B testing allows you to launch more than one campaign simultaneously using varying messaging, color schemes, and even different external links. This is one of the best ways to determine which formats resonate best with an intended audience.
● Media: Measuring success goes beyond the digital marketing realm. Monitor industry publications, blogs, and market leaders who have mentioned your company and/or brand. Influencers also play a significant role in today’s marketplace. Follow recognized influencers and authorities in your industry to keep track of potential mentions that endorse or diminish your brand’s name.
Marketing metrics are the foundation of any successful brand and its campaigns, online or off. Yet, as a marketer or entrepreneur, it’s important to understand that not all data points are created equally. While it may be tempting to chase after clout with the use of vanity metrics and numbers, this strategy can be misleading and not always effective long-term. Understanding that any marketing endeavor you partake in is truly powered by real people is key to establishing genuine loyalty that drives meaningful revenue.
Ashley Nielsen

Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.