Choosing the Best Marketing Metric

Metrics are the key to any successful marketing program. You have to measure what you’re doing to know if it’s working or how to adjust it. But it’s really easy to over instrument your marketing and create a whole bunch of metrics that are hard to track and can actually confuse things with mixed signals. That’s why I like to recommend any marketing program has one metric that the team agrees is going to be the primary indication of performance of that campaign. There are gonna be other more minor metrics to measure different nuances, but there’s one that you focus on as the primary one. And I feel strongly that there’s one kind of metric that is best for that role. Before I share that, let me give you a map of how to view marketing metrics.

Qualitative VS. Quantitative

There are two axes in this map. There’s one that is qualitative versus quantitative. And quantitative metrics you can measure with a number. Qualitative, you can’t.

Subjective VS. Objective

And then the other axis there are subjective versus objective metrics.

Subjective metrics, people don’t always agree on what they mean, whereas objective people tend to agree on what the values mean. So in that universe, I believe there’s one square in that four box square that is the best place to be for that overall metric.

Qualitative and Objective

And that is the qualitative and objective square. The reason why is it’s a great mix of objectivity, which means the team can agree on what you’re looking at and depth. So, qualitative, there’s actually some nuance, some of the properties or the values. So what you end up with is something that’s easily measured and understood, but then there can be a conversation about how the performance is because it’s qualitative. To give you a sense why I think this is the best, think of the alternatives. So if you have a metric that is quantitative, and an objective that, and by the way, all of these metrics have a place but in that case, you’re kind of in robot land, right? It’s very analytical. And that might be a good metric for something that’s automated or an early step of something, because it’s pure numbers and you can miss the nuance of that kind of information.

Qualitative and subjective is wishy-washy land, touchy feely, right? There’s a whole lot of things being interpreted in different ways and it’s hard sometimes to get agreements and land on anything effective from that kind of measurement.

And then the third one that I haven’t mentioned is quantitative and subjective, which to me is kind of like the battle of the statistics where people have alternate facts and while they’re quantified, they can’t agree on what’s good or bad. So there is a time and a place for all four of those kind of metrics. But I encourage you to look for qualitative and objective metrics as your go-to have to have to view it metric for your programs.