May 19, 2025
It can safely be said that there are more marketing channels than ever before.
When agencies were printing thousands of flyers to pin on street corners decades ago, they would have turned green with envy to envision a world where businesses could rely on consumer created videos to do much of their marketing legwork.
With that said, more marketing channels means more data. More data means more useless data. And more useless data means more time trying to figure out what is and what is not impactful. To help in this regard, keep reading as we explore just exactly how to measure performance in the marketing world.
“There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
That old chestnut, commonly attributed to Mark Twain, is appropriate when discussing vanity metrics in the digital marketing world.
Simply put, vanity metrics are figures that look impressive at first glance.
Social media followers. Email subscribers. Likes. Registered users.
High numbers in any of these categories can do wonders for a business’ ego.
Nonetheless, while impressive at first glance, they can be difficult to understand from a performance perspective. They often give the business little on which to base future strategies for ongoing success.
This can mislead the firm into believing that the status quo is working better than it actually is. It may cause marketing managers to stand pat on a current course of action or, worse, to allocate additional resources toward a campaign that is far less effective than it seems upon initial glance.
It is important to note that there is no hard line on what is and what is not a vanity metric. If you made a SMART goal of expanding your social media following by 10% by the end of Q3, then your social media following can be considered impactful performance data (given the context). On the other hand, actionable performance metrics (more on those in the next section) can ultimately be little more than vanity fodder if not utilised strategically to drive ongoing performance.
If you are a little confused by what is and what is not an impactful performance metric, then you may find yourself agreeing with Mark Twain. Performance metrics are just a bunch of numbers meant to bedazzle customers and make company leadership sound like they have everything under control.
This outlook is too simplistic--and cynical.
Without data, you are simply taking a shot in the dark with your marketing campaigns. You are like the circus crier who thinks he notices larger crowds when he starts barking about the fire-swallowing man. Maybe the crowds are larger, maybe they’re larger because of the fire-swallowing man, but there is no way to tell for sure.
The key to marketing data is to zero-in on the all-important actionable metrics. These are key data points that can inform future strategies and decision making. A few of the must-haves in your actionable metric arsenal include:
As mentioned, any metric becomes actionable if it is strategically acquired and used to drive future decisions. However, these key data points, along with others such as lifetime value and customer acquisition cost, are tailor-made to be strategically-obtained, analysed, and optimised for ongoing performance.
The key to marketing success is to obtain actionable metrics. But how do you go about getting them? The process has to be strategic and scientific:
At the end of its run, your marketing campaign may look vastly different from what you had initially envisioned. But it is crucial to put your ego aside and be nimble and pivot, using the data to make adjustments to stay ahead of the competition.
Not only are marketing performance metrics crucial for your day-to-day success in the here and now, but they are an increasingly integral component of the business’s intrinsic worth. In a digital economy, many of the best models for how to value a digital marketing agency, online consultation firm, or any other remote enterprise that does not have a lot of physical assets will rely heavily on how well a business can convert online traffic into paying customers. Factors such as brand awareness, concentration of clients, and maturity of the sales funnel are all key valuation metrics that can be positively influenced by leveraging key performance indicators (KPIs).
In a digital marketing climate with no shortage of channels, it can be difficult to figure out which data matters and which doesn’t. From separating vanity metrics from KPIs to using performance metrics to drive your business’s ongoing valuation, consider any of the tips listed above for digital marketing success in 2025. For more of the latest trends in marketing and business, explore the content at Robin Waite for more thought-provoking reads!
