Vanity metrics are called that for a reason. They feel good to look at. Follower counts going up, page views increasing, impressions in the thousands — these numbers create a sense of momentum that is often disconnected from whether the business is actually growing.
The problem is not that these metrics are useless. It is that they are easy to produce without producing anything that matters, and measuring them often substitutes for measuring things that are harder to make look good.
What vanity metrics actually measure
Page views tell you that people visited a page. They do not tell you whether those people were your customers, whether they understood what you offer, or whether any of them took an action you care about.
Follower counts tell you that people chose to see future content. They do not tell you whether those people will ever buy from you — and in most small business categories, the overlap between “people who follow your LinkedIn page” and “people who will hire you” is small.
Impressions tell you that an ad was displayed. An impression is not a read. A read is not a click. A click is not a conversion. Measuring impressions and calling it marketing performance is measuring the beginning of a chain and ignoring everything that follows.
A simple framework
A metric is worth tracking if it has a plausible causal connection to revenue. Not a correlation — a mechanism. If the number goes up, what specifically should happen that leads to more customers or more revenue?
Applied to common metrics:
- Enquiries or leads generated — worth measuring. Direct path to revenue.
- Conversion rate on the contact page — worth measuring. Indicates whether the site is doing its job.
- Cost per enquiry from paid campaigns — worth measuring. Tells you whether the spend is efficient.
- Keyword rankings for terms your customers actually search — worth measuring. Indicates organic search visibility that matters.
- Post likes — not worth measuring. No reliable path to revenue.
- Email open rate in isolation — not worth measuring alone. Track clicks and what happens after.
The reporting question
The monthly marketing report should answer one question: is our marketing investment generating business outcomes? If the report is full of numbers that do not answer that question, the report is not a management tool — it is a comfort document.
Replacing vanity metrics with meaningful ones requires setting up measurement properly from the start — conversion tracking, goal completions, attribution that connects campaigns to actual enquiries. It is not difficult. It is just less commonly done than it should be.
Every marketing engagement I take on starts with measurement setup before any spend begins. If your current reporting is not telling you whether marketing is working, get in touch.