Vanity Metrics: What They Are and Why You Should Avoid Them

Futility of vanity metrics

As a marketer, you probably use various metrics to measure and evaluate your marketing performance and success. Metrics such as website traffic, social media followers, email subscribers, and video views can help you understand how your marketing efforts are reaching and engaging your target audience. However, not all metrics are equally useful and meaningful. Some metrics may look impressive and flattering, but they may not actually reflect the true value and impact of your marketing activities or that of your business. These metrics are known as vanity metrics.

What are 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 informs future strategies. These metrics are often easy to measure and manipulate, but they do not indicate any real return on investment (ROI) or customer behavior. Examples of vanity metrics include:

  • Website traffic: The number of visitors or sessions on your website may seem like an important indicator of your website’s popularity and reach, but it does not tell you anything about the quality and relevance of your traffic, or how your traffic converts into leads or customers.
  • Social media followers: The number of followers or fans on your social media accounts may seem like a measure of your social media influence and authority, but it does not tell you anything about the engagement and loyalty of your followers, or how your followers interact with your brand or products.
  • Email subscribers: The number of subscribers on your email list may seem like a measure of your email marketing potential and growth, but it does not tell you anything about the deliverability and open rate of your emails, or how your subscribers respond to your email campaigns.
  • Video views: The number of views on your videos may seem like a measure of your video marketing reach and impact, but it does not tell you anything about the retention and completion rate of your videos, or how your viewers take action after watching your videos.

Why you should avoid vanity metrics

Vanity metrics may be tempting and satisfying to track and report, but they can be misleading and harmful for your marketing strategy and goals. Here are some reasons why you should avoid vanity metrics:

  • They do not help you make data-driven decisions: Vanity metrics do not provide any actionable insights or feedback that can help you improve your marketing performance and outcomes. They do not tell you what works and what does not work, what to do more of and what to do less of, or what to change and what to keep. They do not help you optimize your marketing tactics and channels, or allocate your marketing resources and budget effectively.
  • They do not help you align with your business objectives: Vanity metrics do not align with your business objectives, such as increasing sales, revenue, or profit. They do not show you how your marketing activities contribute to your bottom line, or how they generate value for your business and your customers. They do not help you demonstrate your marketing ROI, or justify your marketing spend and efforts.
  • They do not help you build trust and credibility: Vanity metrics do not build trust and credibility with your stakeholders, such as your management, your team, your partners, or your customers. They do not reflect the true quality and impact of your marketing work, or the real needs and preferences of your target audience. They may even damage your reputation and credibility, if your stakeholders discover that your metrics are inflated, manipulated, or irrelevant.
  • They can be open to subjective interpretations: Vanity metrics can be interpreted in a variety of methods, thus creating confusion instead of giving a clear direction towards efforts.

How to avoid vanity metrics

To avoid vanity metrics, you need to focus on metrics that are relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your marketing strategy and goals. These metrics are often called actionable metrics, as they help you take action and make decisions that improve your marketing performance and success. Here are some tips on how to avoid vanity metrics and use actionable metrics instead:

  • Define your marketing goals and objectives: Before you start measuring and evaluating your marketing performance, you need to define your marketing goals and objectives, and align them with your business goals and objectives. Your marketing goals and objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, instead of having a vague goal of increasing website traffic, you can have a SMART goal of increasing website traffic by 10% in the next quarter, by targeting a specific segment of your audience, using a specific channel or tactic, and measuring a specific metric or outcome.
  • Choose your key performance indicators (KPIs): Based on your marketing goals and objectives, you need to choose your key performance indicators (KPIs), which are the metrics that indicate whether you are achieving your goals and objectives, or not. Your KPIs should be relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your marketing strategy and goals. For example, instead of using website traffic as a KPI, you can use website conversion rate, which measures the percentage of your website visitors who take a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, or making a purchase.
  • Track and analyze your data: Once you have chosen your KPIs, you need to track and analyze your data, using various tools and methods, such as Google Analytics, dashboards, reports, and experiments. You need to track and analyze your data regularly and consistently, to monitor your marketing performance and progress, and to identify any trends, patterns, or anomalies. You also need to track and analyze your data in context, by comparing it with your benchmarks, targets, or competitors, and by segmenting it by various dimensions, such as source, channel, device, or audience.
  • Take action and improve: Based on your data analysis, you need to take action and improve your marketing performance and outcomes. You need to use your data to make data-driven decisions, such as what to do more of and what to do less of, what to change and what to keep, or what to test and what to implement. You also need to use your data to optimize your marketing tactics and channels, and to allocate your marketing resources and budget effectively. You also need to measure and evaluate the impact of your actions and improvements, and to iterate and refine your marketing strategy and goals accordingly.

Conclusion

Vanity metrics are metrics that make you look good to others, but do not help you understand your own performance in a way that informs future strategies. They are often easy to measure and manipulate, but they do not indicate any real return on investment or customer behavior. Examples of vanity metrics include website traffic, social media followers, email subscribers, and video views.

To avoid vanity metrics, you need to focus on metrics that are relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your marketing strategy and goals. These metrics are often called actionable metrics, as they help you take action and make decisions that improve your marketing performance and success. To avoid vanity metrics and use actionable metrics instead, you need to define your marketing goals and objectives, choose your key performance indicators, track and analyze your data, and take action and improve.

By avoiding vanity metrics and using actionable metrics, you can improve your marketing performance and outcomes, align with your business objectives, and build trust and credibility with your stakeholders.

AMP and Advertising

Mobile Content

This blog is a modest small-tier blog. It does not get too much traffic (much to my chagrin) and therefore expecting the blog to monetize is too much. However, I have steadily written my thoughts and opinions on this … for the past 7-8 years now.

Looking at such a long time range allows me to study how blogging and blog monhersetization has changed over the years. Especially now with mobile form factors being the main devices that users tend to consume content with.

Continue reading “AMP and Advertising”

Marketing for India2

As someone who has been in the area of Digital marketing for the past few years (close to a decade now), it’s interesting to note and see how it has evolved. Right from the open market economics that AdWords grew upon to the game theory dynamics of Search Engine Optimisation, the way the entire industry has been changing is fascinating.

This article on English Tax and building for the next billion Indian users by Sajith Pai makes you stop and think. At this point, all the marketers and brands are busy selling to that sliver of audience who are online and are english speaking, affluent, willing to whip out their credit cards and make a purchase.

The next Billion

However, there is a larger audience out here, 10 times as much. A billion people, who may not be comfortable with English, who may not have approved credit cards and credit lines … but who are online.

Thanks to the launch of Jio, you now have an audience who may not be affluent, but who are there online. The same audience is being targeted by brands in a language that is not native to them.

English Tax

What is the English Tax? It’s the overhead that a user has to go over to understand what is being said. English is not my mother tongue, however after just under 4 decades of being subjected to both formal and informal education, I have started to think of English as my primary language.

However, that may not be the case of the next Billion. They may not even understand English, and thanks to Google or Apple, they would still be able to browse the web online without even typing a single English letter!

To top it all off, this audience is not being targeted online, not because they do not have a foot print, but because they do not understand the language in which they are being targeted.

This is bad.

Not only would they need re-phrasing of communications, but also a lot of mis-selling and mis-communications would be currently done to them.

Responsibility in Media

Yeah, this section is a joke! However, as digital platforms evolve, can the major players like GAFA take a much more responsible stand on exposing the India2 to the internet?

It’s not as if something is wrong with them. Please note, I am not saying that. However the internet which is most relevant for India2 is in the making and a lot of players are just ignoring this huge blue ocean that needs to be made.

There are content oriented players like BhaDiPa (Bharatiya Digital Party) and  TVF (The Viral Fever) who are making content in regional languages, pretty sure there are many more as well. However, one look at the keyword search volumes in Hindi and Marathi, and I know that we have still miles to go.

This audience for instance may not be doing a lot of searches, however, they definitely are there on Facebook, on WhatsApp, etc.

What can we do to engage as brands and marketers with this audience?

Going Regional

One step is always to speak the same language. I always loved the devnagri script, it just looks graceful when in comparison to the English script. Call me biased. However, as a marketer I would love to see some really good creatives, copy and content being pushed out there in regional formats.

I have seen this being done by some organisations, and just going by their data consumption numbers makes one re-think the language in which they are publishing! Similarly, the concepts of marketing wont change, but since the language is changing, so would therefore the format and forms. Just taking a Facebook update and translating it to Marathi won’t do. It has to be not just re-phrased but even re-thought … some of the memes and mental models that one language/culture has may pretty much ensure that the whole line of messaging be irrelevant.

I think as an industry based in a country that’s slowly emerging online, we are barely scratching the surface on these things.

Life without Google – Gives me the heebie jeebies!

For all the awesome things that Google does, there are always concerns about privacy, data sharing and access to insane personal information. So much so that there is an interesting site out there in the blue nothing – One Day without Google.

This got me thinking. As a collective, we criticize the Search Giant so much, but if it were not for Google, what would we be doing now?

How would life be without Google?

Continue reading “Life without Google – Gives me the heebie jeebies!”

9 Blog Promotion Tactics [Infographic]

A picture is worth a thousand words. Not for a SEO professional though!

I love infographics. Not only are they a beautiful way of driving home a point, but also people remember the key takeaways from visual media much more as compared to text.

These are some interesting tips to promote your blog, and I have to say that I am guilty of not following all of them.

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Food for Thought: Part V

Healthy food

Ever since Google Reader was shunted, I haven’t been able to settle on a RSS reader. I did try out multiple other services and I am currently using Digg’s reader. Not having a good RSS software kind of puts a huge impediment on one’s reading, and this is probably my excuse for not posting more often!

Continue reading “Food for Thought: Part V”