Understanding marketing metrics

What marketing metrics do you need to help you improve your business ROIs? We’ve been kicking off the new year getting last year’s reporting up to date and spending some quality time planning 2024’s metric scene – asking ourselves what have we been measuring, why and how this set of data is help our marketing objectives.

There is a saying, often attributed to Galileo, that says: “Measure what is measurable and make measurable.”

Are you measuring the right metrics? Do you know exactly what marketing activities are getting your sales?

It is all too easy to measure the wrong thing – the difference between marketing analytics and marketing metrics needs to be clear, and often businesses can get caught up with measuring what many marketeers describe as ‘vanity metrics’.

Measuring followers and likes to a social media post may seem important, for example, but for many brands what really matters is the meaningful engagement and return on marketing investment (your time and your budget).

What metrics should you be measuring in your marketing?

Analytics deal with data at a high level, usually combining tangibles and intangibles, using historic and current data. Google Analytics, Good Search Console and SEMRush, for example, are common examples of dashboards that will push out these analytics for you, allowing you to compare between time periods of your choice.

Metrics are normally understood as counting, tracking and communicating data that has been gathered from a specific situation. It could be market share, market growth, brand penetration, growth rates, net sales, customer retention, impressions, or click through rate, for example.

Need help understanding marketing metrics?

If you’re struggling with knowing what to measure in your marketing, or are getting caught up with reporting for what feels like ‘for the sake of reporting’, it would be well worth taking some time out to look at your customer journey – where does your customer interact with your brand, what helps to drive the sale? What objectives do you need to achieve in your marketing – is it sales, brand awareness, or both?

Understand your marketing and sales goals in order to help identify the specific marketing metrics that will make a difference to your business.