Are you doing marketing for your business?

Of course you are.

Even if the only thing you’re doing is turning up to some networking events. Or delivering great service so your customers refer you to other ideal customers.

No matter what type of marketing you’re doing, measurement is an important part of the process. Because what we measure, we manage. And what we manage will work harder for us, which means we’ll be able to do more with less effort.

So, what are marketing metrics? Why should you be measuring your marketing in the first place, how will metrics help you to improve your marketing efforts, and what marketing should you be measuring anyway?

Let’s explore marketing metrics.

What are Marketing Metrics?

Metrics are the things that we measure in marketing that give us data to determine whether or not our marketing activity is bringing in the results we want from our efforts.

They are the numbers – number of followers, number of leads, number of conversions, number of sales, number of customers, number of click throughs, number of comments or number of eyes – that see, engage with or take an action as a result of our marketing.

Why should you measure your marketing?

We do marketing in our business because we want to make sales.

Marketing makes sales possible by helping to grow our audience so we can reach our ideal client and show them what we have to offer.

But if we aren’t measuring our marketing, then we can’t know for sure that it’s working.

We can’t know what type of marketing or messaging resonates with our customers. We can’t account for increases in sales, or decreases in sales. We can’t look for patterns that can help us decide whether we need to do more, or less marketing.

Measurement allows us to make the changes to our marketing that will help us to achieve our business goals.

If you’re not measuring your success, you can’t pivot. And it’s likely you’ll be feeling pretty average about your marketing too.

When you measure your marketing, you’ll feel in control, and when you feel in control, you’ll be able to make marketing decisions more quickly, and you’ll feel more motivated to do marketing too.

How to Measure the Success of Your Marketing

Now we’ve looked at what metrics are, and why you should be measuring your marketing, let’s walk step-by-step through how to actually measure the success of your marketing, and choose the metrics that are right for you.

Decide what measurements are actually important

Not all marketing measures are equal.

What you measure is going to depend on what it is you’re trying to achieve with your marketing.

Are you looking to achieve:

Brand Awareness?
Increased engagement?
Lead Generation?
Client Retention?
A combination of all of these?

Depending on what your goals are for the content or marketing channel, you’ll need to choose a metric that will help you measure whether you’re achieving your goal.

Pro Tip: You don’t have to measure everything. You should measure what you need to measure in order to know if your content strategy is working.

Types of Marketing Metrics You Can Choose From

Once you’ve decided what you want to achieve, you’ll be able to choose your metrics.

There are lots of different names for the same types of data. I’m going to keep my naming convention simple here, so can understand which metrics might be right for you.

You might choose –

Vanity Metrics
These are the number of followers or subscribers you have, or how many likes a post has.

Engagement Metrics
This is how many people take the time to comment on or respond to (i.e. engage with) a post or article, beyond just “liking” your post.

Click-through Metrics
How many people click on a link for something.

Conversion Metrics
These are the number of click throughs who actually take the action you want them to take (like filling out the enquiry form, or downloading the lead magnet).

Sales Metrics
I see these as a little different from conversion metrics, as they link directly to a paid action. This is where you measure how many of your leads (conversions) turn into actual sales, or how many sales a single client brings you (and yes,

Which Marketing Metrics Should You Use?

If your goal is to build brand awareness and increase engagement, then vanity metrics and engagement metrics will help give you an indication of how that's going.

If you want to know if your message is resonating enough for people to take action, then your click-through metrics will help you assess that.

If your goal is to build your email list so you can bring your content to more people and grow and engaged audience, then conversion metrics are your best choice.

If your goal is to convert leads into sales, then your sales metrics will be the most important for you.

It's most likely, that you'll use more than one of these metrics to measure your marketing.

But if you know what your goal is, you'll be able to focus most of your attention on the right metric. And when you measure the right thing in alignment with your marketing, then you can see what's working and what's not and change your marketing message and tactics when you need to, in order to improve your result.

Beware vanity metrics.

Vanity metrics are metrics that make you look good to others but do not help you understand your own performance in a way that will help you make decisions on future marketing.

While they look great on paper, vanity metrics don’t necessarily help you understand whether you’re achieving your marketing goals or make strategic changes to how you’re delivering your content in line with your business goals.

Vanity metrics include things like the number of followers your Instagram account has, or how many likes you get on a post on social media.

They record things that are easy for people to do. It’s easy for audiences to follow a page or like a post. It’s the minimum they can do to engage beyond not engaging at all.

If you’re just starting out in marketing measurement, then tracking some vanity metrics can help you get comfortable with recording things.

They’re also good for making you feel good (hence the vanity element) – but you can’t rely ONLY on vanity metrics if you want to improve your marketing so you can improve your end result.

Decide where you’ll get your marketing data from.

When you’re tracking all these metrics you’re going to measure, the reality is that you aren’t going to be able to get all the data from the one place.

You’ll need to consider where you’re going to pull the data from – especially as not all platforms manage data in the same way.

The key here is to keep it as simple as possible – when you’re just starting out in measurement, measuring something is better than measuring nothing at all.

Some examples of places you might gather your data from include –

Google Analytics
Your CRM or Email Marketing Software
Native Social Media Analytics (data supplied by Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn etc)
Third Party Social Media Management Tool (like Buffer, Hootsuite, Later etc)
Website Analytics
Landing Page Analytics
SEO or SEM Tools

Where you get your data from will depend (of course) on what it is you’re trying to measure.

Decide where you’ll track the data.

Because your marketing metrics will likely come from more than one source, creating a central location to track all your data will make it easier to turn the numbers you’re tracking into something useful.

I find a Google Sheet is a great place to keep track of everything. I have a spreadsheet that I use to capture and track all my key metrics in the one place, making it much easier to compare things month on month, and only see the metrics that matter to me instead of having to filter through reports to find the things I want to compare.

But if the marketing metrics you’ve decided to track are all from one source, you’ll find that most platforms can generate useful reports to deliver the data you’re wanting to see.

Decide how often you’ll capture your marketing metrics.

Once you’ve worked out what you’re going to measure, you’ll want to set a frequency for how often you’re going to record on each of your metrics.

Will it be daily, weekly, monthly? Will it be per post, per week of posts? Will it be based purely on a campaign? Or on all your marketing?

Whatever you decide, set a task reminder for that frequency.

If you’re just starting out, keep things simple. Recording high level metrics once per month will start to give you some data you can take action on.

Use your Marketing Metrics to make Marketing Decisions for your business.

Capturing the marketing metrics for your business is only step one.

You also need to make time to look at the metrics and analyse what’s happening.

Are numbers going up? Going down?

What indicates success? Are you meeting the targets you set in your content strategy and ultimately achieving your goals?

What is the data telling you to do more of? What is it telling you to stop doing? What changes to your marketing should you make based on the data?

Taking action on the metrics your tracking is the critical step two for marketing measurement.

First measure. Then manage.

And you’ll be on the road to ensuring success for your marketing efforts.