Marketing metrics and insights may be easier to access through reporting or on platform, but the numbers are endless – impressions, reach, click-through rates, bounce rates – the list goes on. So how do you know, of those numbers, which ones are actually connected to real business outcomes for your industry or product?
At Threesides, our clients receive monthly marketing reports and round the clock access to their marketing metrics via a digital dashboard, that amalgamates all your platform metrics in one place – from Meta insights to Google reviews to website traffic. But we get that a report full of big numbers might look impressive but if those numbers are not connected to real outcomes, they are just decoration. For this reason, we start every client relationship working together to set SMART marketing goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. These goals are added to reporting and attached to the specific metrics that will measure marketing performance.
The problem with vanity metrics
A vanity metric is any number that looks good on paper but does not tell you whether your marketing is working. Total page views, social media followers or ad impressions on their own can be misleading. A spike in website traffic means very little if none of those visitors are getting in touch or boosting a post on Meta versus setting up an ads campaign can lead to misleading metrics and make it hard to attribute the best return on investment for ad spend.
A vanity metric is not the same for every industry or product. Take a cafe, and they get 200 likes on a beautiful food photo, but if nobody clicked through to the menu or made a reservation, the engagement did not translate. Compare that now to a health service like Medicare Mental Health Centres, who might run a campaign during mental health awareness week, and their goal is to get an educational message in front of as many people. In that context, a post getting 500 likes is meaningful because each like extends the reach of the message, shows public endorsement of the cause and helps normalise the conversation.
What you should actually be tracking
The metrics that matter depend on your business and campaign goals as demonstrated by our post like example. But for most businesses, there are a handful of reliable numbers that tell you whether your marketing is performing.
- Leads and enquiries. How many new enquiries came through your website, phone or email this month, and where did they come from? Good marketing automation and reporting tracks these across every channel.
- Cost per lead. If you are running digital advertising, this tells you how efficiently your budget is being spent. A campaign might generate hundreds of clicks, but if only two become genuine enquiries, the cost per lead is too high.
- Conversion rate. The percentage of people who take a desired action – filling out a form, making a call or completing a purchase. Even a small improvement here can have a significant impact. This is where SEO and CRO work together to make your website work harder.
- Search visibility for the right terms. Ranking on page one of Google is great. But ranking for terms your ideal customers are actually searching for is what drives results. Strong content marketing focuses on exactly that. Let’s take Threesides as the example here, “marketing agency”, “digital marketing” and “social media marketing” are all terms that drive customers to us and are the core business areas we work in so ranking high with these terms is a great match for the type of clients we want to attract.
How to make your reporting more meaningful
Start with SMART goals. When I client says “we want more enquiries,” what we aim for is something that can be measured like increase website enquiries by 15 per cent over the next quarter through targeted Google Ads. That kind of clarity makes it obvious which metrics to track and whether your marketing is delivering. A good marketing plan defines these upfront, a great marketing report is consistently measuring this for lifetime of that goal. And if the business goals change, the marketing goals need to change with that, so our SMART goals are not set in stone.
Ask “so what?” after every number. Website traffic is up 20 per cent – so what? If you cannot connect a metric to a business outcome, it might not deserve space in your report.
Review regularly, but do not overreact. Monthly reviews give you enough data to spot genuine trends without reacting to a single quiet week. And if your market moves with the seasons you are better off reviewing year on year data and possibly over a quarterly period to see obvious trends in your metrics.
Good reporting should answer three questions: is our marketing working, where should we invest more and what should we change? If yours is not giving you that transparency, get in touch.