Vanity metrics are like going to that second bar when you should have gone to bed. 

In the moment, they’re easy to access and hard to resist. They generate excitement and inflate self-esteem, but ultimately, lead you nowhere good.  

Vanity metrics tempt you away from what matters – meaningful and actionable data that reflects your goals and informs future decisions. 

Analyzing the right combination of metrics tells marketers what to do, who to target, and how to create better outcomes. It replaces guesswork with confident, strategic decision-making.

Don’t get us wrong – marketers have a ton of data at their fingertips, and it can be hard to parse meaningful data from the metrics that make us feel good, but don’t really tell us much. Data overload is as overwhelming as endless second-bar chatter – it can hurt more than it helps. 

Ultimately, progress toward business goals is measured by a set of reliable key performance indicators (KPIs). Used in combination, KPIs offer clarity into what is working and context into why (or why not). They must be benchmarked and reviewed over time to gain a holistic sense of achievement, opportunities, and challenges.  

Today, we’re sharing the difference between vanity and meaningful metrics and revealing combinations of useful metrics to measure progress toward popular marketing goals. 

Vanity Metrics vs Meaningful Marketing Metrics - What’s the Difference? 

What is a vanity metric? Vanity metrics are abundantly available and used to justify efforts. They are self-satisfying, showing growth or performance success, but failing to tie back to goals. For this reason, they can’t inform your next strategy.    

Let’s pretend Pam the Marketer is briefing her CMO: 

• CMO – “What’s working?”‍
• Pam, beaming ear-to-ear – “Our Facebook followers are up 50%!”‍
• CMO – “That’s awesome! What’s that mean for revenue?”‍
• Pam, no longer beaming. “Uh…”

Pam shared a readily available metric – Facebook follower count – to demonstrate success. Yet, the CMO is focused on sales revenue. Pam needs metrics that tie the two together – how can Follower count growth drive increased sales? 

It’s important to note that anything can be a vanity metric if it doesn’t reflect the goal. To better answer the CMO’s question, Pam might respond: 

“We’ve seen a 20% increase in website traffic from Facebook. Of those, 5% convert, at an average order value of $25 a person.” 

In this scenario, website traffic, conversion rates, and average order value are meaningful and actionable marketing metrics. Pam can draw a straight line from these metrics to the CMO’s goal – revenue growth. 

Monthly or quarterly analysis of these digital marketing metrics advises Pam on how to tailor her strategy. If she sees a dip in website traffic, she can improve her campaign call-to-action or increase campaign volume or spend. If she sees AOV dip, she can bundle products together or add product recommendations to increase cart size. She can pull levers and experiment to incrementally increase revenue. 

Actionable marketing metrics inform your next optimization or tactic. They help you decide what to do next. 

Separating the meaningless from meaningful metrics is challenging. To help, we’re drawing lines in the sand to match critical marketing goals to combinations of meaningful KPIs.  

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Marketing KPI Examples - Combining KPIs to Achieve Goals

Goal 1 – Increase Sales

Increasing sales is a goal for most marketers. As a single metric, though, it doesn’t reveal WHY sales have grown. 

What would support this metric and bring context and clarity? 

You need to understand who is buying and what is influencing the sales increase.

Additional metrics to add context might be: 

• Sales Benchmarks – have you increased or decreased this number YOY, M2M?
• New or Existing Customers – are repeat customers buying or new acquisitions? 
• Average Order Value / Items per order – are customers buying products one-off or a few at a time? Are they purchasing more expensive products?
• Order Product Categories – are specific categories gaining popularity and driving the increase?
• Referring Channels – what channel is motivating customers to visit your site and convert?
• Promotional Campaign Metrics – can you tie the growth back to a specific email or campaign?
• Seasonality – is this growth attributed to popular shopping seasons, like gift-giving holidays? 

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Goal 2 – Increase Webpage Traffic  

Seeing more people visit a webpage or blog post is validating, suggesting the content is good and the time invested to write it paid off. Does this single metric really tell us that story, though? 

What would support this metric and bring context and clarity? 

Instead of feeling self-satisfied with website traffic alone, marketers need to understand how people are interacting with the page. Are they reading it in its entirety or taking action? Does it answer their questions? What types of people find it most useful? 

Gain context by including additional metrics like: 

• Traffic benchmarks – have you increased or decreased this number YOY, M2M?
• Bounce rate – are they quickly leaving after they land?
• Average time on site – how long are they interacting with the content?
• Heat Map/Scroll percentage – how far are users scrolling? 
• Demographics data – do visitors share any themes, like Industry or job title? 
• Referring channel or page – where are visitors coming from, before they land on the page? Could you shorten their journey, reducing steps to find the content or answer their questions? 

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Goal 3 – Increase Users (by % or total #)

Similar to measuring traffic, understanding how many users log in to your website or digital product is an indication of value and business health, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. 

What combination of marketing KPIs would provide context and clarity? 

• Benchmarks – have you increased or decreased the number of users YOY, M2M?
• New or Repeat users – are the users logging in just once or are they recurring? 
• Session duration – how long are users interacting with the product?
• Conversions/Activity – are users completing desired actions? Are they browsing the product or are they using the functionality the way it’s intended? 
• Frequency – how frequently do users return to the website or app? 
• Demographics - are there commonalities between the types of users and their actions and goals? 

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Goal 4 – Improve Website Clarity

This goal sounds ambiguous, but is critical to the overall user experience. Can visitors understand what your business or product does, and the value it brings, at-a-glance? Can they navigate the website to find information or products, and take desired actions?

What would support this metric and bring context and clarity? 

• Number of actions – have you checked Google Analytics to understand how many clicks or webpages it takes to complete the desired action?
• Bounce rate – are visitors confused or unclear, and leaving the site?
• User surveys and user interviews – have you asked customers for direct feedback to reliably understand their impressions, motivations, and challenges?
• Heatmaps and screen recordings – watch customers navigate your website, see how far they scroll a webpage, and where they drop off
• Calls for Help – how frequently are visitors landing on the Help page, reaching out to customer service, or indicating they are confused via the Chatbot?

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Goal 5 - Increased Brand Awareness 

“Awareness” may be step one of the traditional customer journey, but it’s an elusive metric to quantify. To measure awareness health, you’ll look at all aspects of your acquisition strategy and seek growth across conversions. 

What would support this metric and bring context and clarity?

• Sales conversion benchmarks – are you getting more “Contact Us”, subscriptions, or product downloads?
• Key Webpage Traffic – are you getting increased traffic to key sales pages (versus educational material)?
• Email/Newsletter list growth – are more people signing up to hear from your business?
• Social follower count and activity – are more people following your business on social channels AND interacting, via comments or shares?
• Channel traffic – are more people visiting the website from direct, social, PPC, or email sources?
• New or repeat visits – are you increasing the volume of returning visitors or a fresh audience?
• Session duration/Pages per Session – are visitors staying on the website and visiting multiple pages?
• Content downloads – are more people downloading content or otherwise converting? 

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Goal 6 – Social Follower Value

Social media metrics indicate popularity and reach. Yet, each platform measures a different set of metrics and its algorithms weigh activity differently. What can you measure to understand your social audience’s value? 

What social media metrics would bring context and clarity? 

• Traffic from social – are followers leaving the platforms to check you out on owned channels, like your website?
• Sales, Contact Us, Demo Requests from Social Referrals – are visitors from social ultimately buying or converting? 
• Engagement per post/per follower – are followers interacting with your social posts, by sharing, commenting, or otherwise deepening the conversation?
• Mentions – are followers talking about your brand and widening your reach? 

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‍Center Your Strategy in the Right Data

Ultimately, building enjoyable and effective digital experiences is part art and part science. It’s constant measurement and optimization. Marketers embrace that launch, experiment, measure, and optimize mindset with zeal, forever upping the ante to create greater outcomes.

To be successful, they need a thoughtful measurement strategy, centered on the right combination of KPIs. 

Meaningful metrics guide your next action. They help you decide what to do, optimize, remove, or revere to incrementally get closer to your end goal. 

Resist the siren call of the vanity metric. Just like that second bar, vanity metrics might make you feel good in the moment, but you’ll be confused in the morning. 

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