Vanity Metrics vs Actionable Metrics

 

Often, these metrics – follower count, likes, comments shares, they all give the impression that you’re doing well and growing on social media, and they look good to others who come across your account, but they shouldn’t be the key in what defines your business when it comes to your social media marketing. 

 

Whilst you may have a lot of likes, how many of those people are buying from you? How many followers become an engaged customer? How much revenue are you making from your social media marketing? How many referrals are you getting from your socials? Vanity metrics don’t come with context, whereas actionable metrics do. 

Actionable metrics are the ones that help to point you towards what is and isn’t working when it comes to your social media marketing. They’re metrics that are linked to getting specific results – for example, if you’re running an A/B test for ads you’re looking for the one that gets the best click through rate, or has the lowest cost per click, or is bringing in the most revenue. It’s data that gives you the opportunity to scale up your marketing efforts and hone in on the areas that are the most successful for you at that current point in time. 

To put it simply, vanity metrics are just a bit more exciting. Seeing hundreds or thousands of views, likes, followers etc. on your posts can make you feel like what you’re doing is working – and it could be, as long as it’s also aligning alongside your actionable metrics. 

 

When marketers focus solely on their vanity metrics, they’re missing out on the actual metrics that matter. Chances are you’re marketing to sell, so not having any idea of whether your engagement is converting into sales isn’t a great position to be in – which is why you have to know exactly what metrics you want to be tracking. 

The most important thing that you need to consider are your social media marketing goals. Whether you’re looking to build up brand awareness or sell more items through social media, you need to think about what actionable metrics could help you achieve this. You can decide to measure your goals by seeing whether you’ve had an increase in visitors to your site or if people are clicking through and making a purchase after seeing your post or ad. Your vanity metrics can also be tracked here too – brand awareness can also come down to followers and engagement – but this shouldn’t form the basis or be the main focus of your marketing reports. Its good information to have on hand, but shouldn’t shape your performance when it comes to your goals – a steady increase in followers and a steady increase in site visitors can go hand in hand, but remember where your main focus lies. 

Vanity Metrics and Actionable Metrics are both influential, but you must have a good idea of what you really want to achieve from your marketing before tracking either. Remember, actionable metrics are what you really need to be focusing on, but don’t ignore your vanity metrics completely – they can both work alongside one another when measured correctly.