Vanity Metrics to Avoid for SMBs
Vanity Metrics to Avoid for SMBs – Whether you are a start-up zooming towards profitability or a mid-market leader who has been in business for years, there’s one unsolicited piece of advice everyone would tell you in the age of digital transformation: “Grow your followers.” Although most household brands have an enormous following on social media, this does not easily translate to sales. Brand equity goes beyond what the internet shows. It’s the years or even decades that legacy brands invested not just in product development but countless campaigns.
1. Followers
This brings us to metrics that make you feel good versus numbers that matter. If we are talking about results, for example, even if you have one million followers if the demographics don’t fall under your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP), would you think that you can convert these followers into customers? You guessed it right. No. Well, maybe some of them. At least 100 conversions aren’t bad. It’s just that, it’s not sustainable. Imagine having hundreds and thousands of engagements without being able to sell them anything because they don’t have enough buying power to purchase your products. Sure, they may help you endorse your brand to people who can be your customers but that’s mostly wishful thinking. So if you want to amass a huge following, make sure that you are attracting people from your target market.
2. Views
If you aren’t a media company, you can rarely monetise views because you can’t stain your brand just to sell the attention that you’re getting. Influencers or creators profit more from brand deals, affiliate marketing, partnerships and product endorsement. That’s why virality is never a strategy. It’s a pinch of creativity with a truckload of luck. Isn’t it frustrating to get one million views without knowing what to do with it? Yes, you need views but if you don’t know how to turn a viewer into a subscriber and a subscriber into a customer then your marketing funnel is broken. It will only be a matter of time until your video production requires funding to remain competitive.
3. Reach
In the olden days, PR companies would lie about how many people saw your display ads in the local newspaper. Surely, we’ve gotten better since now we have analytics at our disposal. Wrong! Not all data in your insights tab are helpful. Just look at “Profile Viewers” on LinkedIn. What are we supposed to do with that? Reach is also something that would frustrate you especially if you’re getting 4 to 5 digits from it but your revenue seems to be flatlining. This is simply because you can let your entire neighbourhood see your stuff but if your company is built to serve customers from across the globe, those numbers won’t matter.
So what are we trying to say here? It’s never about the big numbers. It’s about gathering data that is actionable. Instead of higher page views on your website, optimise for a higher session duration. Instead of reach, get link clicks. Don’t just look at the click-through rate (CTR), know the average view duration (AVD). We can keep enumerating these acronyms for hours. But the point that we’re trying to make here is that every company has a problem and to find the solution to that problem, you must find the right numbers. By looking away from data that only makes you feel good, you can get the results in then you can finally feel good.