Vanity metrics. What marketing metrics should you be measuring for your digital strategy?

It is becoming more usual (and in some cases, even necessary) to implement digital strategies for business. However, we must be very aware that this is not about knowing how many people have «seen» me or how many thumbs up or little hearts we got in social networks. All these are just vanity metrics if we do not manage to translate them into actions to get the most precious thing for all business: clients (customers who buy, obviously). As  Eric Ries,, author of «The Lean Startup» says, «the only metrics in which entrepreneurs must invest energy are those that help them make decisions«, and that is why I will give you some tips to achieve this in your business:

1.Vanity metrics VS Real people (likes and heat maps)

It is very easy to get distracted by those numbers that raise our entrepreneurial ego (vanity metrics) such as: likes, little hearts and the number of visits on our pages, but we have to stay focused on what really is useful for us; for example

• In the case of social networks, beyond a flat number of likes on our page, we can analyze how many of this number of likes are of men or women and which age ranges occupy the highest percentage; This can help us clarify to which audience we are arriving, if it is the right one or if we are opening new opportunities for types of clients that we might not have considered before.
• Another factor that could be interesting is if our followers are willing to share our content, and if so: what kind of content they like the most, and try to find out why, to generate more of this type of content.
• In the case of web pages, it should interest us how much time people spend browsing our pages on the mouseflow page, where it stops most, if they read our entire page or leave after a certain point, and which pages are the most popular. Fortunately, there are already tools that allow us to know all this, I know you may be thinking about Google Analytics, and it does help a lot, but I like other tools like MouseFlow, which are much more visual and allow you to interpret the information in a simpler way. For example, it contains heat maps that let you know how far people are on your page, and the words or images they try to click on (to name a function). This allows you to make the necessary changes to your pages to improve the results and your marketing metrics.

2. I am popular VS I really interest them (sales funnel)

Maybe you’ve heard about the sales funnel, which is nothing more than defining each of the stages that people go through to become your customer. The important thing here is to know how to measure how fluid is the progress of people through it.

For example, suppose the stages of your funnel are 1. that someone sees your ad, 2. visit your site, 3. leave their data, 4. buy and recommend 5. he recommends you. Now suppose that of every 100 people who see your ad, only 10 bought you and 6 recommended you. This gives you enough information to:

• Determine your cost per client: that is, if for each thousand pesos, you reach 100 people and of these 10 you buy, you know that each client cost you $100. So either invest more to get more customers or improve your sales and marketing strategy.
• Know where your bottleneck is: if you measure the number of people in each of the stages, you will be able to know which is the stage where the greatest number of people get stuck and this will allow you to take action to modify and improve what is being done in that stage.
• Know if something improved or worsened: if you take the habit of reviewing your sales funnel regularly, you can know your «average» in each of the stages and take action whenever any anomaly comes up.

As you can see, something that simple can have a very big impact as long as we do not get involved in the vanity metrics. It’s simpler than you think, if you like you can download our free template to make your company’s sales funnel.

3.Theater VS Action (A / B tests, and marketing strategies)

Last, but not least, we must be able to know how effective each of our actions in advertising are, regardless of whether they are digital or physical. You can not have a website or a profile on any social network just for «fashion»; you should always have a goal, as well as each of your ads.

1. Define the goal of your ad: What do you want to achieve? Brand positioning, sales, registrations … this depends on the following actions that you must take
2. Measure where they come from: as you may have heard, you can pay Facebook (or other social networks) for showing your ad to a certain audience, as well as Google for showing your site to people looking for certain phrases … well, you should know, What half worked best! This is why Google Analytics works, and this allows you to invest your money better next time.
3. Define el objetivo de tu anuncio: ¿Qué quieres lograr? Posicionamiento de marca, ventas, registros… de esto depende las siguientes acciones que debes 
4. Do tests: it is practically impossible to hit the perfect ad on the first attempt. For this you can do what is called A / B tests, which are ads with the same objective but with certain variations; these can be the change of a phrase, some image or some color … it does not have to be the biggest change in the world, but believe me, the small details change the results a lot. The point is that you cast both at the same time and see which one worked best.
   On pages similar to this kind of evidence, you can show one version of your page to one audience and another version to the rest and see what results there were in each one. This allows you to know if your message is the right one for your market, if your product is for the market that you believed in or if you could focus on a new one, among other things.
5. Measure how much each client costs you: as we sometimes say among the team, a $50 advertising is expensive if it did not bring you any results. The point is: every investment you make to attract new customers must be that: an investment, not an expense! So, based on your sales funnel, measure: for each peso you invest, how many are returned to you in sales … and you will know if you are on the right track in your strategy. 

In conclusion, it is very easy to get lost in vanity metrics, it can even be very comfortable, because they are numbers that sound as if we were doing great … but if what we are looking for is a true success of our business we must keep focused on marketing metrics that are actionable that lead us to improve the results of our companies. I hope these tips will help you, and I would like to know what other marketing metrics do you implement in your company?

* And if you like to expand a little on the subject of sales, you can download our free eBook to Improve the results of your Sales Team, in the banner below: