A vanity metric known as an analytics item is one that can be measured but does not represent a true return on investment. Examples include things like the quantity of fans, likes, or comments.

The best way to contextualize these metrics is with more precise figures like click-through rate or visitor-to-lead conversions.

Let’s read on.

Vanity Metric: What Is It? & Qualities Of Vanity Metrics

Vanity metrics are objectives that sound good on paper or suggest success and growth, but the data shows no relationship to conversions, revenue, growth, or other business objectives. Vanity metrics have the following characteristics:

Look Good But Lack Useful Information

Vanity metrics give the impression that the business is succeeding or moving forward when, in fact, they don’t provide any useful information or information about the investment’s return.

Lacks Analysis, The Data Appears To Be Valuable

A data analyst or business strategist who has the right mindset and perspective can transform some vanity metrics into actionable metrics. For instance, tracking visits to your landing page is important, but if you don’t contextualize the data and also track conversion rates or bounce rates from that page to assess customer churn and make improvements, those metrics can become vanity metrics.

Suggest Growth Without Any Supporting Evidence

If you don’t look at the big picture, tracking just the number of downloads or followers can be a vanity metric. A business might only monitor followers on social media, for instance. The company may appear to be successful as the number of followers grows, but if a closer examination of the engagement and conversion rates shows that these rates are low, their social media presence may not have a significant impact on sales.

Remember that defining a vanity metric can be arbitrary, and that if the data is not contextualized, all metrics could qualify as vanity metrics. If you don’t use analytics tools to evaluate the results’ implications, even an actionable metric could turn into a vanity metric. See more about What Is A Media Planner?

Examples Of Vanity Metrics

Here are three examples of vanity marketing metrics that have no connection to corporate goals or financial results.

Focusing Only On Active Users

Even though a company may have a large number of customers signed up for their service or product, these customers may stop using the product or service altogether. A vanity metric is one where a company only counts active users, ignoring inactive or unsubscribed users.

Social Media Metrics That Track Only Followers

A business with a sizable social media following might appear to be doing well, but by focusing solely on the number of followers (a vanity metric), they might miss out on monitoring whether this total number translates to greater brand awareness, social shares, engagement, or conversions.

Track Page Views But Not Conversions

The number of visitors to your site is indicated by page views and click-through rates. These metrics, however, cannot tell you whether your landing page is effective or whether visitors are turning into new customers and buying your products. You can gain a better understanding of your customer retention rate, the number of repeat customers, whether the visitors are staying and looking at your products, and the effect of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by taking into account other helpful metrics, such as your bounce rate or pages visited per session.

A Real-world Living Room Example Of Vanity Metrics

It’s common to find vanity metrics-driven hype in the marketing of entertainment media and hardware. Microsoft publicly dropped a popular vanity metric of console hardware sales in 2016, which is a great example of the year. Microsoft now reports on the number of monthly active users of their Xbox Live service in place of the public metric of running Xbox sales. The good thing about us selling consoles is that your console install base will always increase, according to Xbox’s Phil Spencer, who commented on the modification. However, that doesn’t really indicate how well-balanced your ecosystem is. We place a lot of emphasis on the monthly active user base because we are aware that those users actively choose our platform, service, content, and games. How content and involved those customers are will serve as a barometer for our success.” The running total of console sales in this instance served as the vanity metric. The number would never decrease, was an unreliable barometer of success, and was linked to one-time hardware sales rather than the more profitable recurring service subscription sales. Before the change, the vanity metric mandated that a sale that resulted in an enthusiastic new user counted the same as a sale that resulted in an Xbox gathering dust in a living room. Reporting on something as erratic as active subscriptions may seem risky, but it has evolved into a much more important metric that more accurately reflects the health and longevity of the service.

How To Distinguish Vanity Metrics?

We suggest reading up on SMART KPIs before we discuss some common considerations and queries: those being metrics that are specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-related. A tried-and-true method for avoiding the most typical metric pitfalls is frequently to adhere to the SMART criteria.

Which Business Decisions Are Possible Using The Metric?

Sorting through data to determine what actually helps versus what just looks good can be very challenging. A quick way to determine whether a KPI is vanity data is to ask: “Can a course of action or decision be made based on this metric?” If the response is “no” or “I don’t know,” you should probably rethink your decision. You can decide with the aid of clever, practical metrics. They offer commentary and context regarding what your company is doing and whether it is effective. They assist you in modifying your marketing tactics to draw in clients or in honing your sales pitch when working with a particular industry. Any data you collect and analyze should aid in improving your company. Example: A landing page for marketing an ebook download comes to mind. While counting pageviews won’t help you decide what to do with your business, counting the number of downloads might motivate you to experiment with different on-page copy, call to action buttons, or form submission methods.

How To Deliberately Produce The Outcome?

A further indicator is your ability to control cause and effect within your data. Lightning rarely strikes the same place twice, and observing random occurrences isn’t very useful. Page views from popular content are great, but if you can’t replicate it to build on your success, they are useless. It also doesn’t help if you didn’t anticipate that virality in the first place (see SMART metrics for more information). Can the same outcome be reliably repeated? You can’t make a process better if you can’t control the variables and repeat the procedure to produce a metric that is statistically similar. If you can’t enhance the procedure, you can’t enhance that metric, and it won’t be of any assistance to you. Example: Consider a well-known magazine that you can subscribe to, such as The New York Times. The running total of subscriptions increases whenever the President of the United States tweets about the magazine. The magazine, however, is unable to consistently reproduce the result because it is so closely related to an unpredictable external factor.

Is The Data An Accurate Representation Of The Truth?

Data can often be altered or “punched up” with additional money, especially in some online fields. For instance, social media metrics are entertaining to view, but because you can essentially pay to boost their numbers, they are at best unreliable. Seriously, for $50 you can buy 90,000 followers and establish yourself as a well-known figure online in just two hours. This means that the amount of followers your brand has is a vanity metric; however, if you wanted to optimize for how many followers you could buy for $50, you would have a great metric. Additionally, think about whether your data source is dependable and consistent or if there is a seasonality or an uncontrollable third-party algorithm at work, such as Google’s algorithms. At the end of a quarter or during the winter holidays, a month-over-month view can appear really impressive. These elements shouldn’t automatically rule out any data, but they should be carefully taken into account to guide your metrics. Example: Use social media as an example. Facebook’s news feed algorithms underwent a fundamental change in January 2018. Local news has started to take precedence in news feeds. This has the effect of making local news publishers appear more valuable than global news publishers, sending an abruptly contradictory signal to various social media and distribution channels. Vanity metrics might be difficult to pinpoint and can differ depending on the sector and particular needs of each business. If a metric will help your business achieve its objectives should be your primary consideration, then ask yourself that question.

Vanity Metrics Vs. Actionable Metrics

Whether a metric is labeled, vanity or actionable depends on the organization and its unique business goals.

As summarized by Tableau, a visual analytics platform:

“Vanity metrics are measurements that enhance your public image but do not provide you with the information you need to plan for the future. These metrics are motivating to mention if you want to appear to be progressing, but they are frequently inactionable and unrelated to anything you can meaningfully control or repeat.”

A vanity metric is superficial, poorly understood, and often results in a team resting on its laurels rather than digging into the data for guidance on how to improve the product. This kind of measurement has the ability to lure organizations off course.

An actionable metric is a clearly defined measurement that delivers valuable insights related to business objectives. Teams can use this information to make wise decisions about the future of a business or product.

Actionable metrics, as opposed to vanity metrics, which frequently lack substance, give meaningful, practical advice on how to use the data, which helps businesses make better decisions.

A word of caution: Accessible and auditable actionable metrics are also essential. By concentrating on the right data, strive for quality over quantity. Additionally, measure only what is necessary to avoid getting bogged down in useless information.

Tips For Getting Actionable Metrics

Asking yourself the following questions will help you decide whether a metric is one you should take into consideration in order to achieve meaningful business results:

1. What business choice is possible with the metric?

2. How could you consciously duplicate the outcome?

3. Is the data an accurate representation of the truth?

Naturally, you must be fully aware of the objectives of your organization before attempting to answer any of these questions.

Conclusion

One of the easiest and most challenging marketing tasks is determining the effectiveness of content campaigns on social media using vanity metrics.

It’s straightforward because vanity metrics are widely available across all platforms and simple to obtain in large quantities; however, it’s challenging because they are frequently ambiguous when it comes to reporting an ROI or value to a business. This second point is the obstacle that many marketers face when trying to determine the real worth of a vanity metric to a company.

Many thanks for reading.