Analytics
Marketing Metrics That Actually Help You Make Decisions
A metric earns its place in a report by changing a decision. Most of the numbers in a standard marketing report do not.
There is a simple test for any number in a marketing report: if it moved 30% in either direction, would anyone do anything differently? A surprising share of standard reporting fails that test.
Activity metrics versus decision metrics
Impressions, reach, sessions and follower counts describe activity. They are useful as diagnostics when something else moves, but they rarely justify an action on their own.
Decision metrics answer a question someone is actually asking: should we keep spending here, should we fix this page, should we call people faster?
A short list that usually earns its place
The exact set depends on the business and on what the data can honestly support.
- Qualified leads, using a definition sales agrees with
- Cost per qualified lead by channel and campaign
- Lead-to-opportunity rate
- Time from inquiry to first contact
- Conversion rate by landing page and by traffic source
- Pipeline and revenue attributed to marketing, with stated assumptions
Definitions do more work than dashboards
Most reporting disagreements are definition disagreements. Marketing counts a form fill; sales counts a conversation with someone who has budget. Both numbers are correct and they describe different things.
Write the definition down, agree on it across marketing and sales, and put it in the report itself. A dashboard built on an undefined term produces confident, well-designed confusion.
Say plainly what the data cannot tell you
Attribution has real limits. Cross-device journeys, offline conversations, privacy controls and long consideration cycles all blur the picture. Reporting that acknowledges those limits is more trustworthy than reporting that quietly assigns every sale to the last click.