When used as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in marketing, easy numbers lie and have little correlation to campaign success. The trick to avoiding the allure of easy numbers is to always pair the outcome with its impact on conversions, the next step, or to revenue. Next time you work on your slide deck for an internal meeting, you will likely spend a good chunk of that time hunting down that one big number or up-and-to-the-right graph to include. In marketing, we have to measure what we do, and we want to talk about the good results, not the bad. We do this not only for our co-workers or board, but also for ourselves.
But, personally, after working actively within high-tech startups, I’ve realized how often those rah-rah slides deceived everyone. They created a heroin drip of pats on the back that were supported by nothing real. Marketing teams encounter vanity metrics on a frequent basis. However, it is the success of all campaigns that matters, not just the sexy ones.
I can remember preparing for meetings, where after producing metrics that seemed to show serious success such as trial sign-ups, clicks, site visits, etc. (whatever I could find that looked awesome), I realized there was a serious problem. In the meetings, everyone was scratching their heads and asking, “How did that last big result you showed not lead to revenue?” I was just as confused. My response was to find another cool-looking graph or number.
This is so common that it’s hard to think of a startup where similar situations have not occurred. Even the darlings of the tech world fall into the trap of being lied to by easy numbers. Like Docker (sorry to pick on you), with their public hub download numbers. Huge numbers — that did not seem to relate to meaningful adoption. They were measure-tinkering and eventually stopped referencing it. Consider open source software (OSS) vendors that count the size of their OSS community. Seriously, every single one of them does this. My previous employer counted the number of free trial users (users who were exploiting freemium trials, but did not feel like there was enough value when it came time to pay). The companies HPE/Micro Focus have measured the volume of traffic on a microsite, but not where that traffic went later.
All of these results matter. They are all top-of-the-funnel traffic. But, how they convert to the next step in the buyer journey is just as important. Generally, there is an inverse relationship to the number of trials, clicks, and views, and the percent converted. The greater the number, the lower the conversion. At some point, the conversion may be so low that it can’t compete with more targeted efforts.
So many times, companies focus on the numbers at each stage of the funnel without wondering about the rate of transition between stages — a better barometer of how your funnel is moving. A constipated funnel is bad.
Avoid easy number deceit: the questions you and your company should not be asking
“That post went viral: why don’t you just make more like that?”
If you ask yourself a question like this on a regular basis, then you are addicted to vanity numbers and don’t realize that easy numbers lie. That is not how virality works. If virality did work that way, someone would have cracked the “algorithm,” and every post published would be viral. We would all be robots, and none of us would have a job.
“I just don’t understand. Why do we have so many trials, but so few customers?”
People trick you to access freemium or trial software. So, many people sign up for something and then abandon it. The flow looks like this: open tab, sign up, go to another tab while page loads, and forget about trial. They frequently will try again later with a different email address. It’s not uncommon for a techie to sign up for something three times before they actually test it.
“We got a ton of clicks on that ad, but why no conversions?”
Where the potential customers landed when they clicked did not fit expectations, or their persona did not fit the offering. Or, it was competitors trying to thwart you. Or, people were coming for info and it was easier to click on your ad than to type the URL.
“Why so many trade-show scans, but so few responses?”
We really shouldn’t consider trade shows as lead gen activities anymore. Often, the vendor is the problem. I’ve regularly encountered a booth attendant who admits they just need a scan: they don’t care who I am. Scan numbers easily lie. Every attendee knows what is going to happen when they get scanned, and they have their “unsubscribe” trigger finger ready. It’s a small price to pay not to have an awkward moment with booth staff and get a pair of socks or a trinket for their kid. They may even be interested in you, but not because of your scan. Your value is showing up, smiling, and answering questions of those who ask.
Closing thoughts
If you’re just looking for easy numbers and nice graphs, go to Fiverr and get them. You can buy large amounts of traffic to anything these days. Or, you can be realistic about your marketing KPIs. Measure your collective marketing efforts over long periods of time and build cohorts to see how targeted groups of campaigns do compared to others. Marketers should reach for the stars when designing a campaign but be consistent and realistic when evaluating the results.
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This post was originally published in May 2017 and updated in November 2022.