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The funnel can get fuzzy when you don’t know what you need to look at
It’s obvious but unavoidable. Metrics can present a “slippery slope” for marketers. Measurement is necessary to assess and gauge marketing efforts, of course, but often times, choosing to focus on the wrong ones can be worse than using none at all. The fundamental problem is that much of the time marketers can’t measure what they’re really interested in, so they end up using metrics that they can measure; regardless of how closely the metric is related to the desired business objective and how accurately it reflects what they want to know.
Of course, some marketing metrics directly reflect what you want to know. If you’re looking at something as clear-cut as number and size of sales on a site, then the ROI becomes very concrete. Other digital platform measurements aren’t quite as easy. For example, there aren’t very good metrics for social media. It’s difficult to say what the profit per Facebook fan is. ”Like” it or not.
Since there are literally hundreds of marketing metrics available to choose from, designing a marketing initiative, defining your objectives and then picking measurable metrics to support those goals becomes a vital first step. You also need to make sure you have enough metrics to understand what is really going on, but not so many that you’re overwhelmed by non-relevant information. One is probably too few. Ten is probably splitting hairs.
Often people will latch onto a single metric and not think through what that metric means. Sometimes clients are prone to this and it can pose a challenge to reality. This makes it even more important to carefully choose what you measure with conviction. Your choices may evolve later based upon situational changes and needs, but you’ll likely not be wrong. Not many marketing metrics are completely wrong anyway, but many of them can be wrong in a particular context. Sometimes a metric is wrong because it not only doesn’t tell you what you want to know, it actually misleads you. This can lead to campaign failure and client loss. Something not fun to measure.
Sometimes a metric is just irrelevant. Either it doesn’t tell you anything useful or, worse, the entire marketing effort is directed at the wrong expectation. It is important to tell the difference. And to convince your client which metrics do actually matter. Remember: the client is always right…unless they are wrong!
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