4 Old School Marketing Metrics Not To Use

by Robb Begg, CMO at Introhive

The problem with the obvious, old school metrics:

Clicks do not equal Consumption.

For years click-throughs have been the most important metric for marketers, but the intense attention paid to clicks has also slowly revealed some of its biggest problems as a measurement of audience attention.

There’s increasing evidence that while people may click, they didn’t necessarily read or watch your content and they almost certainly didn’t read or watch the whole thing. A recent Chartbeat study discussed on Time.com showed one in every three visitors spend less than 15 seconds reading articles they land on.

Likes do not equal Success.

If constant changes in the Facebook algorithm for what appears in users feeds is any evidence, chasing likes can be a less than efficient effort at best. There’s also evidence that a fairly significant number of likes may not be in your target market, even if your ads to get them were expertly targeted.

Follows and Shares do not equal Engagement and Credibility.

It’s important to measure what gets shared, but the aforementioned Chartbeat study also concluded that there is no relationship whatsoever between the amount a piece of content is shared and the amount of attention an average reader will give that content.

A lead does not equal a good opportunity.

So you’ve created killer content and perfected your SEO. Your website ranks high on Google and traffic is growing exponentially. What’s the first thing you’re likely to realize? You’re now facing down a dwindling lead to real opportunity ratio, and it takes even more resources to qualify the good leads from the garbage leads.

New metrics you can use to improve marketing measurement:

Web Attention Metrics.

The most innovative web properties are measuring things like time on page, how far readers scroll, and good old fashioned recall. YouTube and other web video platforms will even show you exactly how many seconds into your content people paid attention. Web attention metrics are a growing field of study and understanding, and now is definitely the time to begin tracking them and paying attention if you aren’t already.

Automated Lead Evaluation and Scoring.

As mentioned above, just measuring the number of leads isn’t the whole picture. It’s critical to start measuring whether those leads are of a high quality by tracking if they are in your target market, how strong a relationship exists between your company and the lead, and how likely the lead is to buy.

Relationship activity and trends metrics.

At Introhive, we believe that relationships rule everything, and right now they’re going mostly unmeasured and unmanaged. This is the problem we solve. It’s important to measure the trends and activity in relationships with the key accounts and companies you’re working with to know if they’re getting stronger or weaker. Lots of activity and a strong relationship score can be indicative of a sale that can be closed quickly while a weakening relationship might be a prospect that needs more nurturing. Relationship scores can be one metric to indicate the effectiveness of your content strategy and your awareness strategy.

As Introhive’s CMO, Rob Begg is responsible for making sure sales has the leads, tools, and awareness needed for success. Prior to joining Introhive, Rob was vice president of product marketing for salesforce’s Marketing Cloud. With almost two decades’ and five start-ups’ worth of marketing and sales enablement experience, Rob is often sought to speak and comment on social, content, and online marketing in high-growth business.