There are certain numbers that look wonderful in a marketing report. A social media post reaches 50,000 people. Your website gets 10,000 visitors in a month. Your LinkedIn following grows by 30%. Everyone is pleased, the graphs are heading upwards and the presentation practically makes itself.
But then someone asks the obvious question: what did all that activity actually achieve?
It’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer sometimes, because digital marketing has given us an extraordinary ability to measure things without necessarily telling us whether those things matter.
This is where vanity metrics come in.
Numbers that look good on paper
A vanity metric is a number that looks impressive but doesn’t necessarily tell you anything meaningful about performance.
Social media followers are a good example. Having a large following can help a business build awareness, establish credibility and reach more people. But if most of those followers will never buy from you, use your services or engage with your organisation, the number itself isn’t particularly useful.
Website traffic can be much the same. Ten thousand visitors might sound like a success, but if none of them is interested in what you offer, the traffic isn’t doing much for the business.
Even engagement can be misleading. A post might attract hundreds of likes because it is funny, controversial or simply entertaining, without giving anyone a reason to remember your business or find out more about what you do.
None of these numbers is inherently bad. The problem starts when we treat them as evidence of success without asking what they actually mean.
Context changes everything
Imagine two businesses running Google Ads campaigns. The first generates 1,000 clicks, while the second generates only 200.
At first glance, the first campaign appears to be doing considerably better. But suppose the first campaign produces just two enquiries, while the second produces 20, five of which turn into paying customers.
Suddenly, the smaller number looks rather more interesting.
Of course, you would still want to understand the cost of each campaign, the value of the customers and the profit generated. But that is precisely the point. A number only becomes useful when you understand what sits behind it.
The same applies to SEO, social media, email marketing and almost every other digital activity. A growing audience or a rising traffic graph can be encouraging, but you need to understand whether that growth is contributing to something worthwhile.
Start with the outcome
One of the easiest ways to avoid vanity metrics is to decide what success looks like before you start measuring it.
If you’re trying to generate enquiries, track the enquiries and, where possible, how many turn into customers. If you’re trying to sell products, look at purchases and revenue. If you’re building awareness for an organisation, you might measure relevant audience growth, meaningful engagement or whether more people are finding and using your resources.
The right measures depend on what you’re trying to achieve.
This doesn’t mean ignoring the smaller numbers. Impressions, clicks, followers and page views can help explain why something is or isn’t working. They can show you whether people are seeing your content, whether your message is attracting attention and where you might need to investigate further.
Think of them as diagnostic tools rather than the final result.
Reports should help you make decisions
A useful digital report shouldn’t simply tell you what happened. It should help you understand what happened, why it might have happened and what you should consider doing next.
If traffic has increased, is it reaching the right audience? If engagement has fallen, does that actually matter? If a campaign is generating leads, are those leads relevant and valuable? If your SEO is improving, are you becoming more visible for the searches that matter to your business?
These are the questions that turn reporting into something useful.
Google Analytics, Search Console and advertising platforms can provide plenty of data, but no dashboard can decide which results matter most to your business. That requires a clear objective and a little thought.
Bigger numbers aren’t always better
There is nothing wrong with wanting your business to reach more people, attract more visitors or grow its following. Those can all be worthwhile goals.
Just don’t confuse them with the reason you’re doing the work in the first place.
The aim of digital marketing isn’t to produce a report filled with impressive numbers. It’s to help your business achieve something, whether that’s winning customers, building relationships, sharing knowledge or making valuable information easier to find.
So the next time a marketing report arrives with a particularly exciting graph, enjoy the good news, but ask one more question.
What does this number actually tell us about the success of the business?
That is usually where the more interesting conversation begins.
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