Marketing Metrics You Can Ignore

“Vanity” Marketing Metrics You Should Ignore

The term “vanity” metrics has made its way into the marketing metrics lexicon recently, and for good reason. What many use to measure results can very often be misleading and due to this, it’s worth examining some of the marketing metrics you could (and possibly should!) disregard…

Here are a few you can safely ignore:

• Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers and LinkedIn Connections – Whoever has the larger numbers wins, correct? If only. The truth is, more virtual bodies following you results in better conversions only if you are actively engaging with them, and creating a relationship. Having tons of likes or followers who never make the transition to customers is essentially pointless.
• Comments – Again, with the goal being to improve conversion,  merely creating a blog post that titillates and creates a large number of comments, but generates no leads, is a waste of a blog post. Make the reason they comment have something to do with leading them further along the path toward conversion, such as a topical question.
• Impressions – Mainly an advertising metric, the number of ad impressions is also pointless for our purposes, as it does not reveal any measurable action. It tells you the number of times your ad displayed on a computer screen, not how it performs. Instead, have a look at click-thru rates and conversion rates.

More on this can be found at HubSpot.

Those you should keep an eye on:

• Shares – Having people share your content, emails and other media is a step in the right direction. This means that not only is your content making an impact, but it’s also being passed around.
• Social mentions and citations – Seeing that Google is now integrating social signals and citations into the search algorithm, this is an element that is very helpful. This aids your site in search, along with authority.
• Conversions – The holy grail, so to speak. If all of your social media and content isn’t ultimately resulting in conversions, you must take a good look at it.

Read more about this at Mashable.