The term ‘vanity metrics’ has been in use for at least a decade. I’m not sure exactly where it originated, but it may have been about the time of the Lean Start Up revolution, so possibly Eric Ries coined the phrase. It’s certainly bandied about, especially in marketing, when discussing trends and success for marketing activity. And just like it sounds, including these metrics in reporting is considered vain, and contributes to the unfortunate and untrue reputation of marketing being about ‘fluff’ rather than results, so it’s better to avoid these whenever you can.
What are vanity metrics?
Simply, vanity metrics are all those metrics that make you say, ‘oh that’s interesting’, rather than ‘oh that tells me what I need to do next’. They are interesting rather than actionable, so they are more about padding a report rather than getting to the crux of the issue. When we go back to the Lean Start Up approach, at its core it is about creating a ‘build-measure-learn’ feedback loop, so if you are only measuring numbers that don’t help you learn, you are not going to be lean and you won’t be able to make changes or pivots quickly because you don’t have enough actionable information.
Classic Vanity metric examples
- Social media ‘likes’. ‘Likes’ are free and they don’t tell you much except to encourage you to think, ‘Yay, they like me’.
- The number of re-tweets. Again you can feel as if you have made an impact but this metric isn’t going to tell you whether it has had a positive effect on your brand or more sales conversions without further supporting metrics.
- Measuring page views on your website. While it might be interesting to see a large number of visits to your website, especially if you’ve spent a lot of money building it, unless those visitors are staying on your page, learning about your product and becoming converted customers, the metric is possibly redundant.
Making social media metrics useful
Unfortunately in this age of impatience we want results overnight, because instant ‘insta’ gratification takes too long. And, there are loads of ways you can beef up your socials so you look more effective and important, without really going to much effort. Buying followers is one way to increase your reach but beware because it’s been proven time and again to be a waste of money unless it’s only one small part of your strategy. Organic activity over time is more likely to get you the results you require because if people choose to follow you because of your content, they are far more likely to interact with your posts and buy from you (if that is the ultimate goal). For capital ‘i’ Influencers who make a living from posting content for their advertising partners, they still really need their followers to buy based on the post they’ve made about the product they’re being paid to promote, because spreading brand awareness only doesn’t really cut it for their partner who is trying to flog product. Buying followers also looks dodgy as. Unless you’re Jennifer Anniston who reached 1 million Instagram followers less than six hours after joining the platform, you’re going to look like a fraud if your following increases so quickly without any content history.
Time and effort spent carefully crafting your content so it reflects your brand and value proposition really provide the best road to increasing your profile and attracting your target audience. Once you have the eyes and ears of your target demographic, they will interact and ‘like’ your posts much more regularly. Likes alone don’t cut it though, so you need to make your posts count and connect with your followers.
To turn the number of ‘likes’ into an actionable metric requires tracking the number of followers over time and then how many conversions you are seeing based on the content of the posts you’re making. For example, if you get a lot more interaction with video posts and your sales increase as a result, then I would be recommending you post more video content. Of course it’s often not as easy as seeing cause and effect in real time, because with advertising and social posting there is always a lag effect that needs to be taken into account.
Turning page views into actionable measures
To really turn the page view metric into something worthwhile, you’d need to add the following
WHO these visitors are (spam or target customers),
WHAT they do when they land there (do they go to another page on your site),
WHERE they came from (was it from advertising or a click through link and whether they are new or returning visitors),
WHEN they land on the page (so you know the best time to run your advertising or post on socials),
HOW long they stay there and what they do on your page (are they reading, acting on your call to action or do they jump off immediately),
All of these metrics will start to tell the story of how effective your marketing efforts really are and get you to answer the important question of WHY.
Why-based marketing
Answering ‘why’ is at the heart of all of your marketing decisions. The ‘why’ informs you what do keep doing, what to stop doing, what to change so it has more impact and generate a better ROI. Over time if you are measuring all of the above, you should be able to see trends of why your visitors are or are not converting to customers. The reason they aren’t converting is usually not down to one thing you’re doing or not doing but is likely to due to a few of the below.
- Perhaps your call to action is not strong enough.
- Possibly your site navigation is poor.
- Perhaps your advertising message doesn’t really explain what you are selling or
- Maybe you have not defined your value proposition (see Defining your value proposition – Unlocke Creative for more about this).
Remember, a drop in page views/ visitors to your site doesn’t necessarily correspond to a decrease in marketing effectiveness, in fact it could be the opposite. By honing your message and positioning, you may reduce your traffic but attract more of your target group and hence convert a lot more visitors. A higher conversion rate metric is a great outcome you’d be proud to include in a report.
Rhonda Locke is a highly experienced marketer, a customer, product and brand champion, and is the Founder and Director of Unlocke Creative.