Customer Surveys - ‘Vanity’ Metrics vs. Metrics That Matter

You may have certainly heard companies proclaim how they’ve “grown 400 percent!” or increased their sales by “a whopping 500 percent!” The numbers may appear impressive at a glance, but they mean little unless we are aware of the overall context.

If the company’s original customer base was 10, for instance, a 400 percent growth-increase would give the company current customer base of 40. If their original sales revenue was $10, a 500-percent increase in sales would bring them to a “whopping” $50.

Out-of-context growth and sales percentages are just two examples of what has become known as vanity metrics, or measurements that appear impressive on the surface yet are basically meaningless underneath.

Some theorize vanity metrics developed out of need, specifically a need for public relations and marketing firms to show their clients some type of number to prove their services were worthwhile.

Reviewing some prime examples of vanity metrics can provide a solid understanding of why these numbers are essentially meaningless and how you can focus on metrics that matter instead.

Vanity Metric: Overall Website Traffic

Even if your website gets tons of traffic, the overall amount of people viewing your content doesn’t mean much by itself. Just because you get a lot of traffic doesn’t mean you get:

·         A lot of sales

·         Any sales

·         Any insights on your marketing activities

·         Any data on viewers’ engagement levels

·         Any useful information on how to better your brand

Measure Instead: Traffic Attributed to Marketing Activities

Traffic data can be very useful if you pay attention to website traffic that’s directly attributed to your marketing and public relations activities. While the number may be much lower than the overall traffic to your site, you will be treated to a more accurate rundown of marketing materials that are driving the traffic. You’ll also be able to ascertain how much interest your key audience segments actually have in your brand.

Vanity Metrics: ‘Hits’ and Page Views

“Hits” refers to the number of times an individual file is sent to a browser by a web server. Because each web page can contain multiple files, an individual web page can produce multiple hits. A web page containing graphics and five images, for instance, would produce seven hits: one for the page itself, one for the graphic file and one each for the five images.

As you can already surmise, the number of hits a website gets doesn’t mean much of anything at all, especially if you have pages loaded with tons of images, graphics and other files.

Measuring page views can be a little less ambiguous, but the measurement still doesn’t tell you much more than how many times a page has been looked at. The same person could produce multiple page views by repeatedly checking out the same page. And like website traffic, page views don’t automatically lead to sales or provide any truly meaningful insights you can use.

Measure Instead: Audience Engagement

Instead of simply reviewing how many times a page has been viewed, you can look at how the audience is engaging with the page and its elements. Pay particular attention to engagement with media placement, determining whether or not it drives your audience to specific interactions with your downloadable content, social sharing buttons, mailing list sign ups or demo requests.

Vanity Metric: ‘Share of Voice’

“Share of voice” is a percentage that refers to the online content and discussions about your company, as compared to the online content and conversations about your competitors. If your share of voice is 80 percent, that would mean only 20 percent of the online content and conversations were focused on your competitors while the bulk of the attention went to you.

While an 80 percent share of voice may sound impressive, the vanity metric again doesn’t tell you much at all – especially when the number is not likely to be all that accurate.

Unless you have highly advanced data mining, machine learning and natural language process technology, there is simply no way to manually track each and every piece of online content and discussion about your company. Mashable notes the accuracy of your results is likely to be somewhere around 25 to 30 percent, if that high.

Another issue with share of voice as a metric is it only tracks quantity, not quality. The online conversations and discussions may be nothing more than the passing mention of your company, or a mention in a complaint or inaccurate depiction. What should interest you more is quality conversations around your brand and the assurance that your target audience understand what you’re about and what you have to say.

You’d be better off tracking areas where you’re not being discussed to determine where and how to insert your company in a useful way. It’s important to be part of the discussion, but it’s not imperative if the discussion doesn’t involve things that have an impact on your bottom line.

Joining an existing conversation just to insert your name without any substance serves no meaningful purpose. And not all conversations are worth joining; some are simply noise.

Measure Instead: Your Brand’s Key Messages

Keeping track of your key messages can yield much more intriguing information. First note how the media are inserting them in blog posts, news articles and other content. Then continue to pay attention to your key messages as they travel across social channels. This provides insight on to which key messages are having an impact on core audience segments, or those who will actually buy what you’re selling.

The measurements that work for your company depends on your specific strategy and goals, and you have a host of possibilities from which to choose. The current landscape yields more than enough meaningful metrics to render vanity metrics obsolete, right down to the last hit or page view.