Digital Marketers: Welcome to the World of Vanity Metrics
By: Brian Carter
Tags: Metrics, Kpi, Analytics, Marketing Strategies, Digital Marketing

And why it’s a mistake to neglect marketing’s importance to the bottom line.

I think it might be fun to start this article off with a few definitions.

You’re probably familiar with this first one, so just bear with me here: a KPI is a Key Performance Indicator. It’s used to measure the effectiveness of any business initiative.

A great example of a marketing KPI is the number of conversions you receive on a sign up form. You’ve probably placed this on one of your website pages to grab visitor names and emails for your salesteam to follow up with. Or maybe you have a form the lets visitors subscribe to your newsletter.

In any case — by conversions, we mean the number of times that people completed an action you want them to. Divide that by the amount of total traffic on the website page.

That’s your page’s conversion rate, and is — in most cases — more important than a pure count of conversions. Do whatever it takes to increase this.

Easy enough? Great!

Now let’s talk about something that every wise marketer must grasp the value (or disvalue) of — vanity metrics.

While the first definition of vanity (shown below) can be fitting for many of the metrics people idolize, the second definition hits the nail on the head.

That second definition of vanity is what we’re talking about here

What is a vanity metric and why is it irrelevant?

With so many ways to measure growth and marketing success, it’s easy to get caught up in numbers that do not hold a strong weight to them.

Basic examples of lackluster vanity metrics — numbers and accompanying graphs that seem impressive, but upon further inspection, do not contribute much to the bottom line of your business— are social media page likes and page views.

Don’t get me wrong, these metrics still have value for brand authority. But only up to a certain point.

Businesses could have 200,000 page likes on their Facebook page and minimal likes or comments on their daily posts. On the flipside, your business could have 4,000 page likes and each post you make gets hundreds of engagement items (e.g. shares and comments).

Hands down, I would rather be a part of the second business. That’s because more people are resonating with the content being pushed out.

What should happen once your engagement rates are at a level you’re comfortable with? Once engagement rates are up — scale your reach.

What’s your average engagement rate?

Is there a significant difference in your engagement and impressions?

Figure out your engagement rate (i.e. the number of post interactions divided by the number of post impressions).

Facebook make this really easy to access via their Insights module, and most other social platforms allow you to gauge this metric as well.

It’s what really matters when it comes to social media posting, because having a smaller, engaged audience is better than having a ton of followers who couldn’t care less about you.

For Facebook posts —try ignoring all other metrics for a set period of time (e.g. 3 months). Focus on boosting your engagement rate. Do this by sharing content that people want to share with their network.

The fact of the matter is that while vanity metrics (e.g. page likes) are connected to better social proof, once you get past a certain point — you’ll face diminishing returns.

Important KPIs (e.g. engagement rates for social media, conversation rates for landing pages, cost per customer acquisition for sales and marketing operations) are closer to the end of the funnel. Which is to say — a better predictor of business health.

Interesting, right?

How can you measure success?

At the end of the day, each organization is different and thus has different metrics for success.

For example, if you’re an e-commerce site: you could have 50,000 hits on your website and 2M Twitter followers. These sound like wonderful numbers. But if that traffic isn’t resulting in sales, there’s a problem.

Here are just a few (of many) marketing initiatives you’ll want to try out, if you’re not doing so already: