Why the Metrics You’re Tracking Don’t Matter - and What to Track Instead
In the world of digital marketing, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by the vast amount of metrics available to track for every strategy and tactic. It’s equally easy to get caught up in metrics that, to put it bluntly, don’t really matter. Yes, I’m looking at you, impressions, followers and opens.
How do you know what to actually pay attention to, and which metrics to essentially ignore? Well, that all depends on your goals and what you want each marketing strategy or tactic to accomplish.
Social Media
What you’re tracking: Social account followers
What you’re actually looking for: Company awareness
What to track instead: Reach, content engagement (and if you have to, follower growth rate vs. straight numbers)
Why: Even having 100k followers won’t do you any good if they aren’t engaged. Too many leaders get caught up in vanity metrics like followers so they look like their accounts (and, ultimately, company) are successful, but follower count does nothing to represent their relationship with your company or org. In addition, just because someone is following your page, doesn’t mean they’re always going to see your posts. If your goal is to increase company/organizational awareness through social media, focus on building a posting strategy that’s consistent in frequency and provides content your followers want to interact with.
If you just can’t let go of follower counts, consider tracking follower growth rates vs. raw numbers, which will help you understand the speed your account is (or isn’t) growing over time.
What you’re tracking: Post likes
What you’re actually looking for: Content engagement
What to track instead: Higher-value actions (shares, comments)
Why: Likes or reactions are the most passive social media action available. Think about it: it takes relatively no effort to double-tap an Instagram post without even slowing your scroll, right? While a boatload of likes can go a little ways in boosting views, likes are also the action that benefits your content the least. Instead, seek higher-value actions: shares, comments, saves – actions that go further in getting your posts in front of people beyond your page’s followers.
What you’re tracking: Video views
What you’re actually looking for: Video watches
What to track instead: Video watch time, thruplays/completion
Why: Video views give you an insight into impressions, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a user took in your content. And with video autoplay on most platforms, a played video really doesn’t indicate any action taken – just that the user was scrolling past your content. Instead, consider video watch time or average view duration (how long users stay on your video, which directly influences future recommendations) and/or thruplays (specific to Meta) or video completion, which measure how much of your video was watched.
What you’re tracking: Opens/open rate, total clicks
What you’re actually looking for: Email engagement
What to track instead: Click-thru rate, click-to-open rate, unique clicks
Why: Depending on the platform, open rates can be severely inflated and aren’t overly reliable anymore (at least as a standalone metric). According to one article: “Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), Gmail’s image caching, and bot-triggered activity have inflated open rates far beyond what's meaningful.” Just because an email is opened, doesn’t mean the recipient is interested in what you have to say. Accidental opens can inflate true rates, as can instances when recipients open your email only to unsubscribe.
When it comes to clicks, raw numbers like total clicks don’t give you the full story. Like with opens, fat thumbs can lead to accidental clicks, or users may be clicking the unsubscribe button. In addition, one user could be clicking your email 10 times – instead of 10 people clicking once as you may be imagining. This is where unique clicks become more important.
CTR and CTOR can give even more context, illustrating what happens after your email is delivered and/or opened. CTR compares clicks to total emails delivered, while CTOR compares clicks only to emails opened.
What you’re tracking: Email list size
What you’re actually looking for: Audience reach
What to track instead: Indicators of list health: user engagement rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate
Why: Like with page followers, email list size means nothing if your recipients aren’t engaged. Instead of pure numbers, focus on the health of your list: If email addresses are legit, if users take actions after receiving/opening, and the rate of which people are unsubscribing from your content – all of which can give you indicators of how your content is (or isn’t) resonating with your audience.
Digital Ads
What you’re tracking: Impressions
What you’re actually looking for: Ad/company awareness
What to track instead: Reach
Why: By definition, impressions measure the total number of times your content is displayed. This includes both potential (read: not actual) views – meaning people can completely miss your content at all – as well as multiple views by the same person, neither of which really help move marketing strategies forward.
Reach, on the other hand, measures the number of unique people who see your content. So if awareness is what you’re going for, you need to have a pulse on whether or not your content is being seen – not only if it has the potential to be seen.
What you’re tracking: Clicks
What you’re actually looking for: Action taken on your ads
What to track instead: Click-thru rate, cost per click, conversions/conversion rate
Why: For ads aiming to generate web traffic, clicks only tell you part of the story. It isn’t about the raw number of clicks your ads generate – it’s the rate of clicks (the amount of people clicking on ads compared to the total number of people who saw them) and/or how much you’re paying for each click (CPC) that you also want to pay attention to.
For ads seeking further engagement down the funnel, you’re likely looking for conversions – not just clicks. Think of this similar to email metrics: Do you just want people to open your email, or do you want them to take action after doing so? In ads, do you just want people to click on your link, or do you want them to do something on your app or website (like sign up for an event, fill out a form, make a purchase, etc.) after clicking?
Remember: The full story matters
Metrics don’t exist in a vacuum; they each give you some piece of the puzzle of how your marketing tactics are performing relative to your audience. When determining which metrics to really pay attention to, ask yourself:
What do I want this tactic to accomplish for my brand/company/org?
What do these metrics actually tell me?
Based on the data, am I accomplishing my goal?
If you’re just starting out tracking marketing data, then sure – look at all (or most) metrics a platform provides you to start to build your understanding of how platforms report data and what various metrics actually mean. But don’t lose the forest for the trees – or in marketing speak, what you’re actually trying to accomplish with your marketing program.
Hannah Lushin
SENIOR MARKETING MANGER
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