Your intern's mate gave your last post 47 likes. Brilliant. Did it pay the rent? Did it heck.
Somewhere along the way, the marketing industry convinced itself that engagement equals success. It doesn't. Engagement is a proxy at best and a distraction at worst. Let's talk about what actually counts.
Vanity metrics: the warm bath of self-delusion
Likes, followers, impressions, reach. They feel nice. They make the monthly report look chunky. They tell you almost nothing about whether your business is growing.
We've seen companies with 50,000 Instagram followers and flatlining revenue. We've seen ones with 800 followers printing money. Guess which client we'd rather have.
The metrics that actually matter
Here's the short list. Print it. Stick it above your monitor.
- Customer acquisition cost: What you pay to land one paying customer across all channels.
- Lifetime value: What that customer is worth over their whole relationship with you.
- LTV:CAC ratio: Under 3:1 and you're struggling. Over 5:1 and you're probably underinvesting in growth.
- Payback period: How many months until a customer pays back their acquisition cost.
- Revenue per channel: Not traffic. Not leads. Actual money.
Conversion rate is a team sport
People treat conversion rate like it's one number. It isn't. It's a whole funnel of smaller numbers and each one tells a different story.
- Visit to lead: Is your offer compelling?
- Lead to opportunity: Are you attracting the right people?
- Opportunity to close: Is sales any good?
- Close to retention: Does the product actually deliver?
A 2% site conversion rate might be a disaster or a triumph. Depends entirely on who's landing.
Attribution: the honest conversation
Nobody buys from one touch. They see a social post, ignore it, Google you, read a review, get retargeted, finally convert three weeks later. Last-click attribution says social did nothing. Last-click attribution is daft.
Run a multi-touch model. Data-driven attribution in GA4 is a decent starting point. Better still, benchmark against geo holdout tests. Turn a channel off in Manchester for a month and see what happens. That's real measurement.
Want metrics that actually mean something?
Book a free marketing audit. We'll show you which numbers you should be watching and which ones to bin.
Book your auditThe dashboard that doesn't lie
Most dashboards are decoration. Graphs that go up make clients happy. Graphs that go up don't necessarily mean money.
Build a one-page dashboard with five numbers. Revenue, CAC, LTV, payback period, and net revenue retention. If it doesn't fit on one screen, you're hiding from the truth.
Email metrics that matter
Open rates are officially dodgy since Apple started pre-loading images. Everyone's opens went up 40% overnight. Nothing changed. Apple just fibbed on their behalf.
Watch click-to-conversion, revenue per send, and unsubscribe rate. Those are harder to fake.
Social metrics worth your time
Saves. Shares. DMs. Profile visits. Link clicks. Those suggest actual intent. Likes suggest someone was scrolling on the loo.
Our social media services report on saves per post because that's what predicts follow-on revenue. Likes are a nice-to-have, nothing more.
Brand metrics the analytics won't show
Branded search volume. Direct traffic growth. Review sentiment. Share of voice against competitors. These are the leading indicators of a business people actually want.
If branded search is going up, you're winning regardless of what Meta says this week. Track it monthly in Google Trends and Search Console.
The metric everyone ignores
Speed to lead. How long between someone filling in your form and a human replying? Under five minutes and conversion rates can triple. Over an hour and you might as well bin the lead.
It's not a marketing metric on paper. In practice, it's the difference between a decent quarter and a brilliant one.
Cohort analysis: the quiet hero
Averages lie. Cohorts tell the truth. Group customers by the month they signed up and track their behaviour over time. Retention curves, expansion revenue, churn patterns. All of it.
We've caught countless issues in cohort data that looked invisible in aggregate dashboards. Recently a client thought retention was steady. Turned out the January cohort was churning twice as fast as December. A whole month of broken onboarding, spotted by splitting the data properly. Pairs nicely with a sharp content approach that keeps those cohorts engaged.
Setting targets people can actually hit
Target setting is an art. Too low and the team coasts. Too high and they give up. We use the 70/30 rule. Targets should be hit 70% of the time with solid effort. Stretch goals sit at 30%. Miss everything and you need a different conversation.
Howay then
Stop reporting on nonsense. Start reporting on revenue, efficiency, and retention. Your board will thank you. Your marketing budget will survive the next downturn. And you'll actually know whether what you're doing works.
Likes are lovely. Money is better.
