Most brands measure what is easy: followers, likes, visits. These numbers grow every month and look good in a report. But they tell you one thing only: did people come?
The real question is different: did they stay, and did they do anything?
The easy metric answers the wrong question.
In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries calls these numbers “vanity metrics.” Registered users, page views, followers: they all paint a rosier picture than reality. They don’t tell you what is working.
If a thousand people visit your site and none fill in a form, that thousand misleads you. The budget flows to the growing number; the business stands still.
The right metric counts a behavior.
Facebook’s early growth team looked at one behavior, not sign-ups. Does a new user reach seven friends within ten days? Those who crossed that line stayed. The team focused its effort on that threshold.
Slack had a similar threshold: 2,000 messages sent within a team. Most teams that passed it kept using the product.
In both cases, the metric counts the people who really use it, not the people who arrive.
A wrong metric misleads decisions too.
In 2016, Facebook disclosed that it had overstated average viewing time for video ads. The calculation counted only views longer than three seconds. One large media agency put the inflation at 60 to 80 percent.
Advertisers had set their budgets by that number. The lawsuit was settled in 2019. The lesson is simple: whoever keeps the number, know how they keep it.
Measure first, then change.
To know whether a change works, you first need to measure today. If the measurement and the change arrive together, you can’t tell which one made the difference.
Know your limits, too. With small numbers, one person moves the rate by several points. In a small sample you read the direction; you don’t claim fine differences.
One question for every channel.
You don’t need a big system to start measuring. One question per channel is enough:
- Website: do visitors fill in a form or book a meeting?
- Social media: do followers move on to your site or app?
- Email newsletter: do readers reply or click a link?
Once the question is written down, you know which number to watch.
AI has made measuring easier.
Preparing a report has never been easier. AI gathers the data, builds the table and writes the weekly summary.
But it doesn’t decide what you should measure. Asking the right question is still the brand’s job. However fast a report arrives, it is useless if it answers the wrong question.
Where to start?
Take a look at your own marketing:
- Can you say with a single number whether each channel works?
- Is the biggest number in your report the most important result for your business?
- How did you know whether your last change worked?
If the answers are unclear, your marketing may be running on guesswork.
If you want to decide together what your brand should measure, let’s talk. We start with a short intro call.