Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics: Measure What Matters

Measuring and analyzing data is one of the principles of growth hacking. But look before you leap; you have to measure the metrics that matter.

I have said it before: growth hacking is primarily a mindset. It is the desire to constantly improve and discover where the opportunities for growth are. Two key ingredients are entrepreneurial thinking and the study of data. But the question is: which data do you study?

You often hear people chattering at the coffee corner of your business. Your coworker will excitedly share one of the following bits of information:

• “We have written 20 blog articles.”
• “We have posted 1000 tweets.”
• “We have created 4 whitepapers.”
• “Our exhibition stand was beautiful.”

After saying this, he is beaming. But in reality, your coworker told you nothing that is of value.

Without further interpretation, these numbers can be described as vanity metrics: figures that can give you a good feeling, but that don’t directly affect the bottom line of your company. These numbers do not give you an answer to the question:  “Do you earn enough money to keep paying your staff and making a profit?”

Actionable metrics are numbers that help you to answer the questions about the future of your business; metrics that tell you something about (potential) client behavior and that have a close relationship to your marketing and sales funnel. Some examples of actionable metrics are:

• the traffic on the website (instead of the number of articles);
• the click through rate on your social posts;
• the engagement rate of your Twitter messages (instead of the number of followers);
• the number of qualified leads (instead of just the number of unfiltered leads);
• the number of customers at your exhibition stand (instead of the quality of your stand).

In short, it’s all about setting key targets and designing KPIs. At RevelX, we know how to accomplish that. Do you want to know more? Let’s talk!