Marketing Numbers Made Simple: Which Metrics Actually Matter (and Which Ones You Can Ignore)

Most entrepreneurs I talk to struggle with knowing what’s working in their marketing, and when I ask about the metrics, they tend to go blank. Either they’re afraid to admit they don’t know what to track, or they don’t really understand the numbers. Rather than being embarrassed that you don’t know your numbers, I thought it might help if I walked you through what the different marketing metrics are, which ones you should track, and what they mean. There are a lot of metrics that you really don’t need to worry about, and if you try to track everything, you can easily end up in analysis paralysis because you have too much data to work through.

Which marketing metrics matter?

The most important marketing metrics will be those in your sales funnel. We’ll break them down by section in a minute, but the bottom line is that your sales conversion data will be the most important because that tells you how you make money.

Let’s start with step one of your funnel, traffic metrics.

Your website needs traffic to fuel your funnel, so we’ll want to start by looking at step 1 of your funnel, website traffic. With AI search, we also want to look at AI visibility, but as of right now, it’s not easy to track. I’m sure we’ll have a good way to track AI visibility in the future, and once we do, we’ll want to update our metrics to include that in the 1st stage of the funnel.

Website traffic isn’t the most important metric at this stage of the funnel, though. What we want to look at is how that traffic is engaging with our content. Are we getting the right people to our site through the different traffic channels we’re using?

You’ll want to track the traffic sources you’re using to market your business and find out which ones are sending the most traffic to your site. You’ll also want to look beyond the traffic numbers to see which channels are generating leads and sales. Sometimes you’ll find a channel that looks great because it sends a lot of traffic, but if those people don’t engage with your website, it’s not going to help your business make money.

Once you’ve reviewed traffic along with leads and sales data for your traffic channels in your analytics program, you’re ready to look at the nurture stage of your funnel.

In the nurture stage of your funnel, the most important metrics will tie to email marketing.

You’re likely going to nurture your leads for a while. You need to get them to sign up for your opt-in and become a lead before you can nurture them, so step 1 of this section is to make sure your opt-in is working and you’re getting new people on your list.

You’ll want to track your opt-in landing page conversion rate to see if you have a good opt-in and landing page. If your landing page conversion rate is below 30%, meaning fewer than 30 out of every 100 who look at the page sign up for your opt-in, you have an issue with your landing page.

Paid Ads funnel metrics to track.

If you’re running ads to your opt-in or lead magnet, you’ll also want to watch your cost per lead in your ads manager. You want to make sure your CPL (cost per lead) is low enough that your entire funnel is profitable. With cold ads, you’re likely to see a conversion rate of around 1-2% of all leads who will buy. A 1% conversion rate on cold traffic means you need 100 leads to get one sale. You want to look at how much your product sells for and make sure that your lead is less than 10% the cost of the product to stay profitable. For example, if you sell a $27 product and you have a conversion rate of 1% you need leads for under .27 each to even break even because .27*100 is $27, and if you’re only going to get one sale for every 100 leads, there’s not much room for ad spend there. Now, if you convert at 10% you have more wiggle room, your lead cost can go up to $2.70 average, and you’ll still break even.

Paid ads add more complexity to your marketing metrics because you need to also track your paid ad performance all the way through the funnel. You want to make sure your ad itself is performing. Is your ad being clicked on enough? How many people are converting on the landing page? How many people are buying the offer? There’s a lot more to track with a paid ad campaign to make sure you don’t lose money on ads because your bill for the ads is due, whether or not you make money.

Email Marketing Metrics to track.

Then you’ll want to look at the open and click-through rates for the nurture emails you send out. The open rates don’t tell us much anymore because of how some email inbox systems work so don’t focus on that, focus on your click-through rate instead. You want to see a click-through rate of 1% or higher on all emails with a clickable link in them. Your opt-in delivery email should have a significantly higher click rate than 1% if they have to click to get their opt-in.

Finally, you’ll want to track your conversion metrics.

The last stage of metrics tracking will be for those who are in your conversion section of the funnel. This could be several things. You’ll want to look at the click-through rates of your sales emails. How many people are clicking on the link in your email to your sales page? Then, you’ll want to track the conversion rate for your sales page. Of the total number of people who visit your sales page, how many buy your product or book your services? This is where it’s going to be very important to track which channels are making money for your business, not just which ones bring in traffic. If you don’t have automated tracking in your analytics, you can track a few other ways. You can ask new customers how they found you. You can set up two separate email funnels for your opt-ins, one for organic and one for ads. If you also have a podcast, you can create a third funnel that’s only shared on the podcast.

Which marketing metrics don’t really matter?

Did you notice that I didn’t talk about tracking your follower growth on social media channels? It’s deliberate. Social media follower count is a vanity metric. It doesn’t really tell us anything about the sales conversion for the business. Followers don’t equal sales.

I also didn’t talk about focusing on website traffic growth for the same reason. An increase in traffic doesn’t automatically mean an increase in leads and sales because you may be getting people to the wrong pages of your site.  What’s more important to me is traffic increase on very specific pages (those in the leads and sales portion of my funnel). I do look at keyword rankings because some keywords will drive more revenue growth than others, and I want to know how those keywords are doing. If I have a keyword that directly ties to my main offer and my ranking goes up, I’ll likely make more money.

My student Patty had this happen. She saw a 52% increase in revenue for her 1:1 coaching in a 14-month period. It amounted to an extra $150,000 in revenue for her business, and it was because her #1 keyword moved up the Google rankings to position #1, and she got a lot more of the right people to her site. In fact, her total website traffic dropped by 35% during the same timeframe, but she didn’t care; what mattered was the traffic to the sales pages.

Similar to generic website traffic increases and social media follower growth, podcast downloads aren’t really important. Downloads are good to know, but the reality is our average consumption and follower growth are much more important to podcasting success. Downloads are the podcast vanity metric. You’ll have to search to find your follower count and consumption information. It’s not as easy to find as your download numbers, but it’s in Apple Podcast Connect. These two numbers will tell you how well your podcast is doing with your audience. Do they like your content? Are they subscribing to your show?

Marketing metrics tips to make your life easier.

I recommend looking at your numbers once a month. Keep track of them on a spreadsheet and update monthly. Take note of the traffic to your key pages, your keyword rankings, podcast follower growth, podcast consumption rate for each episode, list growth for email, and sales conversion data to see how you’re doing. If you have a promotion period or launch, definitely review all steps of that sales funnel after you close the cart ad, see how this launch compares to the last, and keep notes so you can compare it to future launches. It’s important to understand what’s working and what’s broken to grow your business.

If you want help with your marketing metrics, start by requesting a copy of my Marketing Checkup Checklist here, and then we can either work 1:1 in Elite Marketing Coaching or in the group program. Either way, I'd love to help you make your marketing metrics make sense so you can start making more money.